Lawsuit abuse reform ranked third on the American Transportation Research Institute’s latest annual list of Critical Issues in the Trucking Industry, and that goes hand in hand with the fourth item on the list: insurance cost and availability.
Trucking companies have been spending money to save money in those areas in recent years with the adoption of telematics and cameras on their trucks, but opinions differ on how useful all that technology can be when it comes to underwriting and lawsuits.
Across America Insurance Services CEO Harish Kapur recently claimed “telematics is overrated in trucking because of the high driver turnover.
“Sixty percent of the driver pool changes by the time a policy renews, making telematics data unreliable for underwriting,” he said in a January post by Insurance Business magazine.
Jeff Borgman, director of underwriting at Aon, parent company of transportation and logistics insurer CoverWallet, both agrees and disagrees with Kapur. Borgman said it depends on the policy and where telematics is being used.
“If you’ve got a lot of turnover in a truck and it’s varied, then you’re going to have to figure out a way to track and monitor that from a telematics perspective. There are telematics companies that will track that and have some of the insights into the driver dynamics of that,” Borgman said. “What it does tell you is how that truck is operated regardless of who’s driving it.”
Telematics are plugged into the vehicle, providing information on things like routing so the insurer can see if a truck is traveling in areas that are more prone to accidents and insurance events.
“There are still some good indicative things that you can tell when you’re insuring the vehicle, which is what an insurance policy typically is insuring,” Borgman said.
Beyond that, he said the insurer is looking at a company’s safety culture – the type of driver they are hiring and what their training programs look like.
But most insurers aren’t yet using telematics in underwriting, though some insurtechs are beginning to use it more for ongoing adjustment to premium and rating. Though that data can provide valuable insight into what occurred in an accident and mitigate some nuclear verdict concerns, Borgman said it is currently used more as a means to provide carriers discounts.
Kapur wrote in the Insurance Business magazine post that Across America gives more credence to dash cameras than telematics because they are more effective in defending against false claims.
According to a study by Bader Law, dashcams reduce fraudulent insurance claims by 15%, they help uncover fraudulent claims in 20% of cases nationwide, and insurers report a 27% decrease in disputed claims when dashcam footage was available. Though this data is skewed toward passenger vehicles, dash cameras are not standard in passenger cars, while many commercial vehicles have them onboard.
Wilson Logistics adopted driver- and road-facing cameras in 100% of its fleet in 2024.
COO Bruce Stockton said the carrier’s insurer sees their systems, including collision mitigation (radar and side sensors) as well as event recorders (cameras) as a holistic solution, with each truck requiring all those systems. He said in a recent conversation with insurance carriers working on the company’s renewal, the company said side-mounted and driver-facing cameras, like forward-facing cameras, are becoming non-negotiable.
“When I asked the question of our insurance carrier, their answer was, ‘Without 100% adoption of cameras, we wouldn’t even be considering writing your liability coverage, and in today’s litigious society, cameras are table stakes.’”
According to Truckstop’s Carrier Insight Survey, 77% of carriers in 2025 plan to make rig upgrades, including safety cameras.
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During a recent webinar on the latest trends in the for-hire trucking sector hosted by American credit rating agency AM Best, Matt Domitrovich of Amwins Group said technology has been a huge benefactor in terms of keeping some insurance costs down.
“And the costs can stay down when you have technology basically avoiding an accident or technology that tells the story of what happened during an accident,” he said. “A lot of times it’s cameras, and unfortunately we’re in a legal environment where you almost have to prove that you didn’t do anything wrong in order to get out of litigation.”
But in that same webinar, Matthew Gauthier of Munich Re Specialty – North America said telematics play an important role alongside dashcams and is “invaluable in creating a fuller picture of the risk.”
Angel Coker Jones is a senior editor of Commercial Carrier Journal, covering the technology, safety and business segments. In her free time, she enjoys hiking and kayaking, horseback riding, foraging for medicinal plants and napping. She also enjoys traveling to new places to try local food, beer and wine. Reach her at [email protected].
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