Commercial fleets now have access to FICO Safe Driving Score 2.0 in eDriving’s smartphone-based driver risk management solution, Mentor by eDriving. This latest safety tool has been upgraded to better predict the likelihood of future collisions — enabling fleet managers to more effectively mitigate risk, lower costs, and keep drivers safe.

The solution is the joint effort of FICO, an analytics software firm, and eDriving, a driver risk management company.

The upgraded tool offers an 18% improvement in predictive accuracy when identifying drivers who are high risk — that is, those who are 30% more likely to be involved in a future collision — versus those identified as low risk, according to the makers.

The goal, say the partnering companies, is to better enable fleet safety managers to recognize, encourage and ensure a safer driving experience.

Here is how the makers describe the solution and how it works. Leveraging telematics-based driving data from eDriving’s Mentor app, the FICO Safe Driving Score predicts the likelihood of future driving incidents by evaluating behaviors proven to be most predictive of crash risk, including acceleration, braking, cornering, speeding and cellphone distraction.

After each trip, drivers not only receive their FICO Safe Driving Score, but also instant feedback providing pointers on how to improve in the future. In addition, each driver also receives 3 to 5-minute coaching modules to help improve identified “at risk” behaviors and attitudes. This insight allows fleet managers and drivers to address driving behaviors that need improvement, as well as acknowledge behaviors that deserve positive recognition.

A study from the Network of Employers for Traffic Safety reports that fleet accidents cost employers $47 billion in 2013. Moreover, the National Safety Council has crunched the numbers when it comes to crashes and found that commercial fleets have an average accident rate of 20% per year.