Fleet managers across Europe are hitting a hard ‘coaching ceiling’ with traditional telematics software, prompting warnings that transport operators must look beyond basic collision metrics to isolate hidden operational drains.

Beyond safety, rewarding good driving directly cuts fleet operational costs

Speaking to Fleet World at Geotab Connect Europe in Barcelona, Steve Lockington, president and CEO of Geotab Vitality, suggested that traditional corrective feedback loops rely too heavily on the limited time and resources of fleet managers, which ultimately caps a business’s safety and financial potential.

By focusing strictly on major safety incidents like crashes, fleets are missing a broader opportunity to reward everyday driver behaviour that directly influences fuel burn, vehicle wear, and staff retention.

The stagnation in traditional vehicle tracking programmes often occurs because companies use data punitively after an event, rather than building daily habits.

“I bought the telematics, I have the cameras. I’ve invested in coaching, and so I have a great safety programme, but I’m stuck from the ceiling,” Lockington said, describing the common structural complaints heard from major global fleets. “The improvements that we see with fleets are driven by how much a fleet manager can coach. It’s that amount of capacity that they have that creates the ceiling. So, with a behavioural science tool, such as Geotab Vitality, if it shifts the accountability to the driver, the performance and the data is in their hands, and it motivates them to want to improve, which means the fleet manager doesn’t have to do as much of the work.”

He said putting personalised targets directly into a driver’s hands, fleets can reward marginal gains in smooth driving before poor habits escalate into costly incidents.

Geotab Vitality arrived in North America in February 2025 and officially launched in the UK and European last summer. The behaviour-based rewards programme is designed to improve driver safety by combining Geotab telematics data with Vitality’s behavioral science

It integrates Geotab’s predictive AI risk analytics with Vitality’s behavioral science tools to create personalised weekly driving goals and an in-app rewards programme.

Points accumulated within the app’s digital wallet do not expire and can be redeemed directly through an in-app marketplace featuring reward partners, including high-street brands such as Asda, Curry’s, and Greggs.

While collision reduction protects corporate duty of care, the broader operational case for rewarding consistent behaviour is the direct link between driver style and ongoing asset costs.

“We’ve seen fleets save anywhere from 2% to 6% on fuel, depending on the type of vehicles and the business that they operate,” Lockington said.

The industry narrative is subsequently shifting toward tracking a wider suite of behavioural habits, using gamified mechanisms like ‘streaks’ to curb silent financial drains such as engine idling and poor vehicle compliance.

“That’s going to make a huge impact both on the fuel savings of the fleets, so beyond the 2 to 6% I mentioned. And then we’re, you’ll also see savings on maintenance because if a vehicle’s running it puts additional wear on the engine,” Lockington added.

“And then we’re going to keep expanding from there. So compliance is next, but maintenance would be another area of productivity.”

A historical barrier to driving behaviour change, particularly among passenger car segments, is the fear of unfair benchmarking. A van courier fighting city congestion cannot be justly measured against an HGV driver on an open motorway, making data-driven fairness vital to driver buy-in. To overcome this, modern systems must utilise machine learning models to cluster drivers contextually against their actual operational peers, said Lockington.

“Each driver is not being compared to each other. They’re being compared to all other drivers globally that look and drive like them. So that is absolutely critical. If you just look at Frank versus Sally versus Susan in the same vehicle and environment, that works fairly,” Lockington explained.