SAN FRANCISCO, CA, May 18, 2026 – Motive has added AI-powered Fatigue Detection, Eating Detection and Collision Detection to its driver safety capabilities, to detect unsafe driving behavior and low-severity crashes that telematics systems often fail to capture. The new AI Driver Safety capabilities are designed to detect early signs of fatigue, eating-related distraction and collision such as sideswipes and fender benders. The models give organizations more event context, helping safety teams assess incidents, coach drivers and review claims with supporting evidence.
Distraction and fatigue remain major factors in preventable collisions, but many behaviors are not identified until after an incident. Fatigue alone accounts for more than 100,000 crashes, 800 deaths and 50,000 injuries annually. Without real-time detection, safety teams have limited information for early intervention, while missed low-severity collisions can delay response, complicate claims and increase liability.
“Distraction and fatigue are among the most preventable causes of collisions, but they’re also the hardest to catch early,” said Hemant Banavar, chief product officer at Motive. “The risk shows up first in subtle behaviors, like eye rubbing or small lapses in attention, that most systems miss. Motive detects those signals in real-time and filters out false positives, so teams can act on real risk before it turns into a collision.”
New AI-powered Driver Safety capabilities include:
- AI-powered Fatigue Detection: Motive uses AI dash cam data to identify fatigue indicators before driver behavior worsens. Its Fatigue Detection system tracks six signals: face rubbing, stretching, eye rubbing, yawning, lane swerving and microsleep. Rubbing Face Detection detects frequent face touching and restlessness as signs of reduced focus. Motive said on-device AI will soon send real-time in-cab alerts to drivers. In the Motive Dashboard, safety teams can review detected behaviors on one event timeline, with drive time and historical fatigue trends. Fatigue Detection system runs on existing Motive AI dash cams and does not require additional hardware.
- AI-powered Eating Detection: Motive uses edge AI to detect eating-related distraction when a driver is actively eating. The system records the behavior only under defined conditions, such as visible food in the driver’s hand or mouth for at least five seconds. Motive said this threshold helps reduce false positives and unnecessary alerts. The company cited eating while driving as a behavior that can nearly double collision risk, with more than half of drivers reporting that they do it.
- AI-powered Collision Detection: Motive combines computer vision with telematics to record collisions that telematics alone may miss. The Collision Detection system detects low-severity events within the camera’s view, including light rear-end impacts, fast sideswipes, minor bumper taps and scrapes in tight spaces or traffic. The system identifies collisions across severity levels while reducing false positives. Managers receive real-time alerts with video and telematics data for incident response, claims review and driver exoneration when supported by the recorded evidence.
“We are primarily an over-the-road irregular route carrier, meaning our drivers do long hauls, do not consistently go to the same locations, and we also have a large number of team drivers in our fleet,” said Western Express director of safety Daniel Patterson. “Due to the nature of our operations, fatigued driving is a concern we are continually trying to raise awareness on and coach drivers on. Fatigue doesn’t show up all at once; it builds through small behaviors like yawning or rubbing your eyes, which are easy to miss. Motive’s new fatigue AI helps us identify these early signs, enabling productive coaching conversations and, in some cases, intervention to get drivers to a safe location before anything happens, including outside of business hours. Motive’s AI Assistant can also interact with drivers in real-time to help them recognize those signs of fatigue and possibly find a safe place to rest, with the potential to significantly improve fleet safety.”
The Motive AI Dashcam uses on-device AI models to detect more than 20 safety events, including AI-powered Lane Swerving Detection, AI-powered Smoking Detection, and AI-powered Forward Parking Detection, with up to 99% accuracy. Since 2023, the Motive AI Dashcam helped prevent over 170,000 accidents and saved 1,500 lives1. On average, customers that used Motive’s AI Dashcam reduced collisions by 80%2 and accident-related costs by 63%.3
An IDC Business Value White Paper, The Business Value of Motive: Accurate AI for Fleet Safety, reported results from organizations using Motive. The organizations reported an average 95% reduction in at-fault collisions. In initial head-to-head trials, they reported 50% higher AI accuracy with Motive. After adoption, they reported 92% higher confidence in preventing unsafe driving behaviors. IDC also reported more than 8x return on safety investment and more than $1.8 million in annual safety savings per organization, based on fewer incidents and lower risk-related costs4.
Motive Driver Safety uses AI Dashcam data from more than one million vehicles and assets to simulate, annotate and train models on tens of millions of events each year. The system sends real-time in-cab alerts from on-device AI, without cloud processing delay or human intervention. Each event is then checked by EVE, Motive’s Event Validation Engine, which uses AI and targeted human review to reduce false positives before managers review events. With AI Dashcam Plus, managers can contact drivers through live two-way calling. Motive said its AI Assistant will soon be able to call drivers through the dash cam when fatigue is detected and prompt them to pull over and rest, including when managers are offline.
Learn more about Motive’s AI capabilities here.
References:
- Since January 1, 2023, based on Company estimates.
- Based on an internal study of customers with at least 90% AI Dashcam adoption for at least 12 months.
- Results are calculated based on customer responses, management estimates, and internal data.
- Source: IDC Business Value White Paper, sponsored by Motive, The Business Value of Motive: Accurate AI for Fleet Safety, doc #US54413826-BVWP, April 2026.
Source: Motive
About Motive
Motive is a fleet management technology company founded in 2013 and headquartered in San Francisco, CA. The company provides software and hardware that help safety, operations and finance teams manage workers, vehicles, equipment and fleet-related spending in one system. Its products include telematics devices, AI-enabled dashcams, mobile applications and compliance reporting tools. Motive supports vehicle tracking, driver safety monitoring, regulatory compliance and maintenance management. The platform gives fleet operators visibility into vehicle location, equipment use and operating costs. Motive serves nearly 100,000 customers, ranging from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies such as Halliburton, KONE, Komatsu, NBC Universal and Maersk. Its markets include transportation and logistics, construction, energy, field service, manufacturing, agriculture, food and beverage, retail, waste services and the public sector.