Samsara’s new Compounding Risk Report says the top 10 per cent of risk‑ranked drivers account for 47 per cent of crashes, based on analysis from the company’s patent‑pending Risk Model. The model evaluates about 50 factors across driving behaviour, exposure, context and driver development to help safety managers prioritize coaching.
The research shows risk increases sharply when behaviours appear together. Drivers showing mobile use alone are 2.7 times more likely than the overall population to fall into the highest risk tier. Adding harsh braking raises that to 4.5 times, and combining mobile use, distraction and harsh braking reaches 5.4 times.
“By concentrating their most intensive coaching on just 10% of drivers, managers can reach the group associated with nearly half of crashes,” said Arpan Podduturi, head of safety product at Samsara. “From there, a strong safety culture and self‑coaching can reinforce safer decisions across the broader workforce.”
The report also finds behavioural patterns persist over time. When comparing a driver later involved in a crash with one who is not, the model prioritizes the crash‑involved driver about three out of four times across next‑day and seven‑day windows.
Separate causal analysis identified aggressive driving, distracted driving and speeding‑related patterns as the most consistent contributors to crash risk. Conditions such as night driving, freezing temperatures and urban exposure can amplify risk but are not coaching targets on their own.
The Risk Model ranks drivers by relative risk rather than predicting specific crash outcomes. It powers Samsara’s Coaching Priority feature, which consolidates risk signals into a single view for managers.
