It might surprise you, but most accidents don’t happen on long journeys - they occur close to home. For rental fleets, the same principle applies near depots and on familiar routes, and it’s a trend worth addressing. A 2023 RACV study revealed that over 52% of minor crashes reported by private motorists happened within 10km of their home.

Why? Familiarity breeds complacency. Drivers relax, skip checks, or take risks because they think they’re“almost there.”

For rental fleet operators, this translates to:

• Higher exposure to low-speed, high-frequency incidents near depots or customer handover points.
• Unexpected downtime from minor repairs that disrupt availability.
• Impact on insurance costs and self-insured risk pools.

What can rental fleets do?

• Reinforce driver vigilance during vehicle returns and local transfers.
• Include training on “familiarity bias” in driver onboarding.
• Leverage telematics to spot patterns in local incidents and adjust processes.

At Insuret, we help rental operators identify risks not just on highways, but in their own neighbourhoods - because safety starts where the journey begins.