From its unmatched database of 358,000 risky driving events captured from field service fleets in 2019, Lytx has released new insights into driving trends in the field service industry.

Lytx's findings include the five risky behaviors seen most often among field service drivers, most improved driving behaviors, and insights on how driving habits in the field service industry compare to those in other industries.

This data was captured from fleets of all sizes and types within the field service industry, including heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC), contracting, plumbing, electrical, pest control, landscaping, cleaning, and more. It is part of an ongoing series from Lytx highlighting key behavior trends seen across the nine industries that utilize Lytx video telematics technology, with the goal of informing and supporting ongoing safety efforts in the industries it serves.

The data will be released twice weekly through May 21 at www.lytx.com/en-us/industry-benchmark-data.

Most Prevalent Risky Behaviors in 2019

• Failure to stop**
• Late response***
• Food/drink observed
• Following distance*
• Cell phone observed

Most Improved Behaviors From 2018 to 2019

• Following distance* – improved 46 percent
• Posted-speed violation – improved 22 percent
• Driver unbelted – improved 19 percent
• Failure to stop** – improved 10 percent

Behaviors may appear on both the "Most Prevalent" and "Most Improved" lists. This demonstrates that even with significant improvement, fleets and drivers must stay vigilant and maintain awareness to keep those behaviors trending downwards.

How Field Service Fleets Stack Up Against Other Industries

Lytx compared the prevalence of behaviors seen in field service fleets against behavior averages of fleets across all its other protected industries. Comparatively, field service fleets stood out in the following areas:

• Posted-speed violation, which occurred 26 percent less often
• Cell phone observed, which occurred 17 percent more often

Common risky driving behaviors observed within a fleet, as well as benchmarking data from fleets both inside and outside of a specific industry are helpful metrics for understanding industry-specific challenges, guiding safety efforts and then measuring success. To better identify and address top areas of driving risk within their individual fleets, thousands of organizations use the best-in-class Lytx Driver Safety Program; these organizations experience on average up to 50 percent reduction in collisions and up to 80 percent on associated claims costs as a result.

Field Service Collision Insight

Lytx also found that 62 percent of collisions in the field service segment were rear-end or backing-related occurrences. Even at low speeds, rear-end collisions can lead to costly litigation. Two key ways to reduce rear-end collision potential are maintaining a safe following distance and eliminating in-cab distractions, such as cell phone use.

About the Data

These insights were derived from Lytx's proprietary database of field service driving data from 2019, including 358,000 risky field service driving events captured last year. For comparisons across industries, Lytx calculated behavior averages from its global database, which contains driving data from trucking, distribution, concrete, construction, utilities, transit, government, and waste industries. Lytx maintains the fastest-growing proprietary database of professional driving data in the world, currently surpassing 120 billion miles of driving data. The data is anonymized, normalized, and in instances of behavior prevalence, generalizable to service fleets at large.

*Following distance refers to a risky driving event in which the distance to the vehicle directly ahead is approximately 1.5 seconds and not increasing for at least 4 consecutive seconds.

**Failure to stop occurs when a driver fails to stop at a stop sign or his/her speed remains above 5 mph.

***Late response occurs when a driver is not distracted yet responded late and abruptly to a readily visible risky situation ahead.