SambaSafety CEO Matt Scheuing Discusses Telematics and Other Aspects of Fleet Safety

In September, Risk & Insurance caught up with Matt Scheuing, the CEO of SambaSafety. With losses in commercial auto being such a pain point for insurers and insureds, Scheuing sheds light on some approaches that could assist many transportation industry stakeholders. The conversation transcript was edited for length and clarity.
Risk & Insurance: What attracts you to the world of technology innovation across different business sectors?
Matt Scheuing: It’s interesting, as Steve Jobs once said, you can’t connect the dots looking forward, but you can connect them looking backward. My journey in technology innovation has been a culmination of experiences and insights gained over time.
Throughout my career, I’ve been drawn to opportunities where technology can make a significant impact. Whether it’s streamlining processes, solving complex problems, or creating entirely new possibilities, the potential for innovation to transform businesses and industries is truly fascinating.
Looking back, I can see how each experience has contributed to my understanding of how technology can be leveraged effectively. It’s a continuous learning process, and I find great satisfaction in being part of that journey, connecting the dots to drive meaningful change across various sectors.
Throughout my career, I’ve always gravitated towards businesses that solve problems, especially in the B2B and technology spaces. I find it incredibly rewarding to work on solutions that make a real impact.
One of my most enjoyable experiences was working in the field of marine navigation and safety. Our company developed innovative software and even had a small production facility where we built high end navigation endpoints devices including radar controllers.
Every day, walking into the office, I felt a sense of purpose knowing that our work was contributing to safer navigation and potentially saving lives at sea. It’s that tangible problem-solving aspect that I find most fulfilling in my professional life.
R&I: What role do you feel passion and purpose play in making work more enjoyable and meaningful?
MS: When you have a strong sense of passion and purpose, it fundamentally changes your relationship with work. It transforms work into something that is deeply fulfilling and rewarding.
Passion fuels your drive and motivation. It pushes you to go the extra mile, to pour your heart into what you do, and to strive for excellence in your field. Purpose, on the other hand, provides a sense of direction and meaning. It helps you understand the bigger picture and how your efforts contribute to something greater than yourself.
When you combine passion and purpose, what you do becomes a lot more fun and engaging. You approach challenges with enthusiasm and view obstacles as opportunities for growth. You find joy in the process of learning, creating, and making a positive impact in your role.
R&I: What role can telematics play in helping small fleet operators manage their businesses more effectively?
MS: Telematics as a whole is very valuable for commercial vehicle operators including small fleet operators. These businesses face significant challenges in managing schedules, personnel, routes, safety and navigating a highly regulated environment..
Modern telematics solutions directly address many of these pain points, and they become a meaningful tool. It’s not just another piece of technology; it’s something that tangibly improves their operations and makes their tough jobs a little easier.
R&I: How and why was SambaSafety formed?
MS: SambaSafety got its origins from acquiring motor vehicle records (MVRs). Many years ago, it was very difficult to electronically acquire motor vehicle records. We went from being a regional provider of motor vehicle records to eventually building an in-depth national network.
It involved dealing with 50+ different state governmental entities, each with their own formats and ways of expressing variables. There was a significant effort in building a normalized input network of these motor vehicle records and synthesizing all the information.
From there, we progressed to the idea of continuously monitoring motor vehicle records for changes, rather than just looking at them at the point of hire. This allowed us to alert employers or fleet owners if a driver had a major incident after being hired.
The next step was pulling in equally rich data from the DOT for regulated drivers. As we built out these information sources, we realized we were giving people very valuable data that could indicate if a driver may have an issue warranting concern.
This led us to acquire a company that built digital training. Our in-house production team has developed over 400 high quality, 3D-rendered courses that allow us to assign training and behavioral intervention to improve driving performance and retain drivers.
With the advent of telematics, we added aggregation data from most commercial telematics sources to our risk cloud. At any point, we can now give a full composite of a driver’s history and current behaviors, combined into a simple risk index. This enables coaching and correction, often before they become serious issues. Our system evaluates, monitors, and continuously manages drivers.
R&I: How effective are the safety tools offered by SambaSafety in reducing crashes and incidents for employers?
MS: At SambaSafety, we have billions of data points that we constantly monitor to gauge the effectiveness of our safety tools. Employers who utilize the tools I mentioned earlier typically experience a 14% reduction in crashes and a 77% reduction in incidents within a year of implementation.
Our extensive data collection and analysis allow us to confidently assert the efficacy of our offerings in enhancing workplace safety.
R&I: What is SambaSafety’s position in the risk and insurance ecosystem, and who are your primary customers?
MS: We serve about 15,000 customers worldwide across diverse end markets, which is one of the things I love about my role. Our customers include owner-operators, some of the largest regulated fleets on the road, and sharing economy companies.
In addition to fleet customers, we also serve the insurance industry. We’re working to bring these two constituencies together more effectively. The VP of Safety at a fleet company should openly share data with their broker and carrier about what they’re doing, and vice versa.
Insurers and brokers should look at tools like ours and consider how they can bring them to their insureds for better outcomes. With underwriting, they use our historical data to assess the risk profile they are acquiring and determine how to price policies.
Then, through the policy lifecycle, it becomes more about risk control – what tools can be leveraged to keep reducing frequency and severity, rather than just resorting to pricing?
R&I: What segment of your customer base is showing the most intense interest in addressing the challenges faced by the commercial auto insurance industry, such as labor shortages and problematic losses?
MS: When I consider our fleet customers, the employers who hand over the steering wheel to their employees, it’s clear that this is where the most intense interest lies. I often say, in all seriousness, that the most dangerous tool an American employer gives an employee is a steering wheel.
It is by far the leading cause of death in the American workplace. Fleet operators are acutely aware of the risks and are eager to find solutions to mitigate them.
R&I: How are fleet operators and insurers responding to the current challenges in the commercial auto insurance market, particularly the rising rates and increased frequency and severity of claims?
MS: Fleet operators are rapidly transitioning from doing the necessary to actively investing in more comprehensive safety frameworks. When I meet with them, they genuinely believe that coaching, training, and constantly reinforcing safety practices are good for business.
On the insurer side, especially in commercial auto, the situation has become a bit of a crisis. Commercial auto rates have increased by 22-23% and claim severity has risen by nearly 36% since 2020.
Rather than allowing prices to continue escalating, insurers are realizing that they need to work on bringing these costs down using safety and risk management solutions. We’re seeing significant interest from commercial auto providers in this regard. Personal lines have already adopted some of these tools, such as telematics, to a greater extent.
In the commercial auto sector, the focus is now on building more robust risk pricing, selection and risk control offerings with the tools available. Our recent telematics survey uncovered 60% of brokers were somewhat or very likely to augment their risk control services in the next 1-2 years. Carriers are even more certain, with 64% saying they are very likely. This approach is necessary for insurers to remain competitive and stop incurring losses in their commercial lines. As it stands, very few commercial auto providers are actually profitable.
R&I: How do we manage the challenge of gaining the trust of drivers to put systems in vehicles that will help improve the situation?
MS: Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, as a technology company, the first thing I’ll say is that any technology, let’s take telematics for example, means little without corresponding action.
Simply installing telematics in vehicles isn’t enough. It’s crucial to gain the trust and buy-in from drivers to effectively utilize these systems. And one of the best uses of telematics is to use the insights alongside coaching and driver engagement. Ultimately, the goal is to translate the data gathered by telematics into meaningful actions that enhance safety and efficiency.
R&I: What strategies can companies use to effectively implement telematics in their fleets while maintaining driver trust and engagement?
MS: When introducing telematics, it’s crucial not to position it as a punitive “big brother” system, as this immediately puts you at a disadvantage with your drivers. Instead, frame it as a partnership in the cab, emphasizing transparency about how the data will be used.
Rather than taking action based on a single telematics incident, focus on identifying patterns over time that can inform coaching and training efforts. Drivers may be skeptical at first, but many come to embrace telematics as they realize it can serve as their best advocate.
For example, a harsh braking incident might be explained by a teenage driver cutting in front of them without signaling. Telematics data provides credence and context to situations that would otherwise be viewed as simple driver error, showing how the driver’s actions may have actually prevented a major incident. Cameras can be used to corroborate a driver’s incident report and exonerate the company in litigated scenarios. This can very quickly translate to millions of dollars in savings, considering how prevalent nuclear verdicts are in the commercial auto environment.
R&I: What advice would you give to companies that are just starting to implement telematics in their fleet?
MS: Implementing telematics is a process, not something that can be accomplished in a single day. When we turn on telematics for customers, we recommend letting it run for two to three months without reacting to every piece of data that comes in.
Instead, focus on identifying trends and patterns. The data will teach you and your organization valuable insights. The key is to determine how you will use that information to improve your fleet’s performance and safety.
R&I: How do you communicate your insights to your customers?
MS: Once we have a clear understanding of the market dynamics, we take a multi-faceted approach to communicate and act on our insights.
Internally, we share our findings with key stakeholders across the organization. This ensures that everyone is aligned and can make informed decisions based on the current market conditions.
Externally, we engage with our clients and partners to provide them with valuable insights and guidance. By sharing our knowledge and expertise, we help them navigate the market more effectively and make strategic choices that benefit their businesses.
R&I: Are drivers the same behind the wheel, whether driving their personal vehicle or a company truck? Do your discussions with partners and clients, as well as data analysis, provide any insights into this question?
MS: Monitoring is effective in a commercial context because it signals that an organization takes safety seriously. While we monitor commercial clients, we are able to identify those personal or off the clock behaviors with our MVR monitoring because that information is tracked to the driver’s record, not a device or fleet vehicle. Once monitoring begins, regardless of personal or business use, we see an improvement in behavior.
The first building block when working with both our insurance and fleet customers is establishing a safety policy and culture. By observing, monitoring, and coaching, you reinforce the importance of safety. This is known as the Hawthorne effect, where people improve their behavior when they know they are being observed.
Our efficacy study tracked several years of driving behavior prior to monitoring and there is a clear decline that begins when these tools are put in place. This is important because we do have customers with grey fleets, or employees driving their personal vehicles for work purposes, like food delivery, sales and running errands.
These measures serve as a constant reminder that safe driving is expected on the job and that the driver is part of the organization’s safety culture. While they may fade into the background, they remain an ever-present signal that the driver is expected to prioritize safety.
R&I: What role does data play in improving driver safety and reducing risk for businesses with fleets?
MS: Data plays an essential role in enhancing driver safety and mitigating risk for businesses operating fleets. At SambaSafety, our mission revolves around leveraging comprehensive data to provide actionable insights into driver behavior and performance.
By analyzing this data, we can identify high-risk drivers and implement targeted training programs to address specific areas of concern. This helps businesses reduce accidents, minimize liability, and ultimately, create a safer driving environment for their employees and the public.
By continuously monitoring driver data, companies can identify trends, adjust policies, and optimize their operations to promote a culture of safety and accountability.
This data-driven approach allows us to develop targeted solutions to mitigate risks and optimize operations. For instance, by monitoring driver performance data, we can identify areas for improvement and provide personalized training programs to enhance their skills and safety awareness.
Moreover, data analysis helps fleet managers make informed decisions regarding vehicle maintenance, route optimization, and resource allocation. By leveraging data, the transportation industry can proactively address potential issues, reduce accidents, and improve overall efficiency, ultimately leading to safer roads and more sustainable operations.
R&I: How can companies effectively use driver data to foster a positive safety culture without being punitive?
MS: Using driver data effectively is about more than just punitive measures. While there are certainly consequences for serious offenses like DUIs, progressive organizations also use the data to celebrate and reward safe driving habits.
Many of our clients feature “top 10 great drivers of the month” leaderboards to showcase their safest drivers. People generally respond well to scorecards and friendly competition. By putting your best drivers front and center, you create a positive culture around safety.
It’s about having balanced conversations. Yes, address problem areas when needed, but also make a point to celebrate the people doing things right. That’s how our clients are successfully using driver data to build strong safety cultures.
R&I: What differentiates SambaSafety from other companies providing data and telematics solutions to customers in this competitive landscape?
MS: There are two key differentiators for SambaSafety. First, on the product side, we have built a comprehensive and easy-to-use mobility risk cloud over many years. We take billions of data points from numerous data sources and distill them down to simple, actionable insights.
As we like to say, making things simple is really hard. A safety manager doesn’t want to do linear algorithms – they want a straightforward risk index that tells them if a driver is getting better or worse each week.
Beyond the significant differentiation in our technology, the second factor is how we align with purpose and put the customer at the core of everything we do. Collaborating around our customers is the number one objective at SambaSafety.
We are deeply invested in our customers’ success. It’s a two-way street where we learn from our customers and hopefully they learn from us as well. Wrapping our culture and commitment around customers isn’t just a slogan, it’s the top goal for every employee at the company.
The risks are very real, and this is an incredibly challenging industry to be in right now. Giving an employee the steering wheel is the most dangerous thing an employer can do.
However, it’s crucial to understand that we are the risk, and risk is not random, it is predictable. People often use the term “accidents,” but there are very few true accidents. We call them crashes because that’s what they are. The term “accident” absolves us of responsibility.
Two main factors driving this risk are distracted driving and speeding. These are things we have control over. 33,100 people lost their lives from distracted driving last year; there would be a massive uproar if this occurred in any other mode of transportation.
We can predict, prevent, and in many cases, preempt these incidents. However, taking action is essential. &