Kodiak's self-driving trucks receive top safety score

SUNNYVALE and MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Kodiak is announcing its achievement of receiving the highest Visually Enhanced Risk Assessment score (VERA Score) for safe driving for its self-driving trucks from Nauto Inc.

“Nauto’s findings add support to our belief that the Kodiak Driver is already among the safest drivers on American highways,” said Don Burnette, founder and CEO, Kodiak. “We believe Nauto’s VERA Score model provides a true apples-to-apples metric for evaluating the safety of trucking fleets. As we work to expand our driverless safety case to public roads and highways, we are supplementing our internal analyses with independent, AI-powered safety validation approaches like Nauto’s to evaluate the Kodiak Driver. We look forward to continuing our partnership with Nauto, as we work to show the results of safety being the foundation of the Kodiak fleet.”

Nauto’s VERA Scores

“VERA Score is Nauto’s proprietary safety benchmark that summarizes a fleet’s driving events and behaviors into a single score, allowing fleets to assess overall driver safety over time,” Kodiak said. “The Kodiak Driver, Kodiak’s AI-driven autonomous system, earned a VERA Score of 98, tying for the top spot among the more than 1,000 commercial fleets in Nauto’s network. All other commercial fleets in the evaluation were operated by human drivers. By comparison, the average VERA Score for a Nauto-equipped fleet is 78, while fleets not equipped with Nauto’s AI safety technology average a VERA Score of 63.”

From 2021 through 2023, over 15,000 people lost their lives in crashes involving large trucks on American roads. Truck driving is among the most dangerous professions for American workers. In 2023, truck drivers had the seventh highest frequency of fatal accidents among civilian jobs, with long hours, distractions and extreme conditions increasing overall driver risk. Advanced safety technologies, like AI-powered driver monitoring and autonomous systems, offer solutions to help address such human-factor risks, according to a company press release.

VERA Score Ranges

VERA Scores range from 1 to 100, with 100 being the safest, measuring performance across four key safety areas: inattentive driving, high-risk driving, traffic violations, and aggressive driving. The Kodiak Driver earned the following scores:

Inattentive Driving Score: 100
The Kodiak Driver achieved a perfect score of 100 in this category, significantly outperforming the average Inattentive Driving score of 62 for baseline fleets without Nauto’s AI safety technology enabled. Top-performing Nauto fleets scored an average of 97. This sub-score measures driver attention by measuring time spent on distractions, such as looking away from the road, using phones and other distraction signals.
High-Risk Driving Score: 100
The Kodiak Driver earned a perfect score of 100 for high-risk driving, outperforming an average High-Risk Driving score of 97 for baseline fleets without Nauto’s AI safety technology enabled. Nauto’s top-performing human-driven fleets averaged a score of 99.5. This sub-score applies immediate score penalties for collisions, near-collisions and collision warnings that decay over time.
Traffic Violations Score: 100
The Kodiak Driver earned a perfect score of 100 with no traffic violations, compared to the average Traffic Violations score of 43 for baseline fleets without Nauto’s AI safety technology enabled. Top-performing human-driven Nauto fleets average a score of 93. This sub-score assesses compliance by measuring time spent driving above posted speed limits and other violations.
Aggressive Driving Score: 95
The Kodiak Driver scored 95 in this category, significantly outperforming an average Aggressive Driving score of 67 for baseline fleets without Nauto’s AI safety technology. Top-performing Nauto-equipped human-driven fleets averaged a score of 93. This sub-score evaluates driving smoothness and deducts points for hard-acceleration, -braking, and -cornering and time spent following another vehicle too closely.

Safer Roads for All

“Our mission at Nauto is safer roads for all by providing objective, data-driven insights into safety performance in real time to drivers to prevent collisions and to fleets to manage their risk,” said Dr. Stefan Heck, CEO of Nauto. “Kodiak’s near-perfect VERA Score demonstrates how AI can support and enhance fleet safety. By integrating Nauto’s advanced safety technologies, we believe fleets can better prevent risk, protect their drivers, and operate more safely on the nation’s roads.”

Kodiak selected Nauto after an extensive evaluation of driver monitoring systems, determining that Nauto’s technology was very effective and consistent at detecting driver distraction. Additionally, Nauto’s safety platform seamlessly integrates dash cam alerts with Kodiak’s Operations Center workflows and supports Kodiak’s efforts to maximize efficiency while operating its autonomous fleet, according to the release.

Safety Benchmark

VERA Score is Nauto’s proprietary, collision loss outcome-calibrated, safety benchmark. The VERA Score synthesizes over 20 driving variables detected through vision-based AI into a single score, calculated on a per-trip basis. This comprehensive approach is designed to capture critical driving risk factors that traditional telematics or other less performant AI can miss. This provides detailed visibility into driver behavior patterns, enabling fleet managers to move from reactive incident response to proactive risk prevention, according to the release.

“Nauto’s safety solution is built upon extensive real-world analysis of more than 6 billion AI-processed driving miles, enabling the Nauto VERA Score to demonstrate strong predictive collision forecasting,” Kodiak said. “Nauto data reveals that fleets experience an average 21% reduction in collision rate for every 10-point VERA Score improvement. Further, drivers with a VERA Score of 20 show a collision rate of 10.44 crashes per million miles (CPMM) or 16.71 collisions per million kilometers (“CPMKM”), while VERA Score 90 drivers demonstrate a safety record of 2.1 CPMM or 3.36 CPMKM—representing a 5x safety performance differential.”

Dana Guthrie is an award-winning journalist who has been featured in multiple newspapers, books and magazines across the globe. She is currently based in the Atlanta, Georgia, area.

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