The High Cost of Accidents Prt 2: How CDL Legal Monitoring Can Reduce Risk

The simple fact: Accidents can be very costly. To prevent them—and other high-ticket fines and violations—you want to ensure that you have the very best drivers operating your fleet.

This is why Motor Vehicle Record (MVR) Monitoring is so essential. Read on to learn more about how CDL Legal and Carrier Guard Monitoring can help protect your fleet, your business, and your drivers.

How MVR Monitoring Lowers Accident Risk

Many fleets still only follow the minimum federal regulation by performing pre-employment MVR pulls and annual pulls on a driver’s employment anniversary.



But ultimately, that’s not enough. The challenge is that potential issues could come up between an initial check and an annual report pull, then again between your regular annual checks. The simple fact is you can’t always rely on drivers to self-report, whether because they’re withholding information or because they simply forgot about the instance or the need to report it.

There are many violations that an unsafe driver can rack up. The Department of Transportation reports these as the top violations for commercial motor vehicles:

• Moving violations: Speeding; following too closely; improper lane changing; reckless driving; improper turning; failure to yield to right of way; railroad grade crossing violations; and failure to obey traffic control devices.
• Driving with a suspended or revoked license.
• Not having a current medical certificate.
• Driving under the influence of drugs or while in possession of an intoxicating substance.
• Failing to use a seat belt.
• Using a hand-held device.
• Having an unauthorized passenger on board.
• Failing to conduct pre-trip inspections.
• Failing to use/improper placement of warning devices.

The cost of such violations can be steep—thousands of dollars per infraction.

But by continuously monitoring MVRs, you have a powerful tool to help identify risky behaviors, (ideally) correct them—or immediately remove dangerous drivers from the road—and avoid such costly liabilities. The process can help you identify problems more quickly, address concerns, and (if necessary), establish corrective action plans before out-of-service issues arise and you are hit with serious violations or fines.

Simply put: Your bottom line and fleet safety are improved, as is the safety of other motorists.

IMPROVED VISIBILITY TO YOUR CSA DATA

Carrier Guard is the ultimate risk mitigation service. By combining the ticket-fighting prowess of CDL Legal and exceptional visibility of your current safety threats provided by Carrier Guard, we have equipped you with the necessary tools to greatly improve your companies CSA Rating. When you sign up, you will get access to low-cost CSA score management tools and visibility to citations that will take your safety initiatives to the next level. Become a top-tier safety fleet through our comprehensive and real-time Data visibility features.

Other Benefits From NTA

Not to mention the fact that MVR reports can often be difficult to interpret and can lead to administrative errors or omissions on your part as an employer—the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, in fact, has created a code dictionary to help carriers interpret them—MVR Monitoring has a myriad of other benefits.