How do you reduce risk and coach consistently — without overwhelming your managers or losing driver trust?
That question took center stage at Inside Look: How Motive’s new AI-powered safety features reduce risk and reward drivers.
During the Vision 25 session, Motive’s Senior Product Director Nihar Gupta and Senior Sales Engineer Alex Martell shared how new AI-powered safety features will help safety teams coach regularly and easily. Clint Brocato, Corporate Safety Manager at Murphy-Hoffman Company (MHC), showed how his team is already applying these tools across a fleet of more than 1,000 vehicles.
Here are three takeaways from the session to help you detect risk, reward safe driving, and scale coaching — without burning out your team.
Detect risk and great driving with AI
In 2025, Motive will launch several new AI models to help you spot unsafe behavior and recognize drivers who do the right thing. In addition to the AI models covered in the Vision 25 keynote, other upcoming capabilities include:
- AI-powered Collision Detection. Detects more collisions, including low-severity events often missed by telematics.
- AI-powered Forward Parking Detection. Flags when vehicles back out of a parking spot, a common cause of backing collisions.
- Pedestrian collision warnings. Alert drivers to brake when a pedestrian is detected ahead.
- Positive driving detection. Flags defensive behaviors, like creating extra space after being cut off or reacting quickly to avoid a collision.
Unlike other solutions, the Motive Safety Team reviews every event flagged by AI to remove false positives, tag positive driving, and confirm collisions — saving you time and ensuring that nothing critical is missed.
Customize your program to fit your fleet
With Motive, you can tailor safety settings to match your operational goals:
- Turn alerts or event capture on/off by behavior
- Adjust thresholds at the company or vehicle level
- Customize Safety Scores to prioritize the right behaviors
“We run a very competitive rewards program,” shared Brocato. “So the opportunity to set an in-cab alert so they can own that behavior and correct it before it turns into an event capture is great. That said, we don’t do that for all of our behaviors. Distracted driving, for example, is zero tolerance and always captured.”
Scale coaching with a hybrid approach powered by AI
Coaching at scale is one of the hardest parts of running a fleet safety program. Many teams struggle with delayed conversations and inconsistent delivery, especially when managing hundreds of drivers who are often out on the road.
AI Coach solves for this by automatically sending AI-generated coaching videos to drivers, delivered through a customizable AI avatar.
Each video includes:
- An introduction: The AI avatar opens with a friendly, relatable message to engage the driver.
- Safety Score trends: Highlights how the score is trending and the progress made.
- Top 3 behaviors: Breaks down the most impactful behaviors affecting the Safety Score, with video examples for context.
- Actionable takeaways: Clear guidance on what the driver should focus on to improve.
- A conclusion: The AI avatar wraps up with encouraging words to motivate continued progress.
AI Coach is powered by three core technologies:
- Lifelike avatars designed to feel familiar and engaging.
- AI-generated voices that sync naturally with facial movement.
- Large Language Model (LLM)-powered scripts that tailor the message to each driver’s performance.
We’re excited to use AI Coach. We really like the consistency and the timeliness of it. You can’t be everywhere at once. And as much as you try to train your coaches, your department manager, their communication or their message may be a little different than what we want to see.
Want to go deeper on how these new AI-powered safety features can help you build a stronger safety culture?
For more on Motive’s safety advances, check out our rundown of the biggest product launches announced at Vision 25.
