What Happens After the Accident? Hidden Exposures, Governance Gaps, and the Future of Public Sector Risk Management
Published on June 23, 2026
What begins as a minor vehicle accident can become a multimillion dollar claim years later.
That was one of the most powerful lessons shared during SHzoom’s panel discussion at this year’s PRIMA – Public Risk Management Association
Conference, where public sector risk leaders explored a challenge facing organizations across the country:
Why do some incidents become major liabilities long after the collision itself is over?
What began as a conversation about fleet accidents quickly evolved into something much larger. Risk managers, safety professionals, attorneys, claims specialists, and public sector leaders shared a common reality: the greatest challenges often have little to do with the accident itself.
Instead, they stem from what happens next.
Meet the Panel
The session featured an accomplished group of public sector risk and safety leaders whose combined experience spans municipal government, public entity risk pools, insurance carriers, transportation, public safety, and enterprise risk management.
Panelists included:
- Mark Jennings, Director of Risk Management for CIS , Oregon’s public entity risk pool, with experience spanning municipal risk management, global claims leadership, insurance operations, and emergency response.
- Jamee Higgins, Safety and Risk Manager for the City of Midland, Texas, and board member for both PRIMA and Texas PRIMA.
- Matthew Phillips, MS, MBA, Safety and Risk Manager for Hanover County and Hanover County Public Schools, and recipient of PRIMA’s Risk Manager of the Year award.
- Tamika Puckett, CRMP , Executive Vice President at Protecdiv, and former risk leader for the City of Atlanta, City of Chicago, Zoom Video Communications, Willis Towers Watson, and multiple public school systems.
Together, the panel provided practical insights on accident governance, claims management, departmental collaboration, analytics, and emerging risk challenges facing today’s public entities.
The Real Cost of an Accident
Throughout the session, attendees identified a range of recurring challenges:
- Delayed incident reporting
- Incomplete documentation
- Difficult settlement negotiations
- Public misunderstanding of claims decisions
- Lack of departmental accountability
- Organizational silos between fleet, risk, and operations
- Difficulty defending claims months or even years after an event
One participant described the frustration of receiving injury notifications long after an incident occurred, while another panelist shared a striking example of how quickly risk can escalate over time.
What initially appeared to be a minor vehicle incident involving limited physical damage eventually evolved into a multimillion dollar claim demand.
The case served as a powerful reminder that an organization’s greatest exposure is often not the accident itself, but the quality of the information, documentation, and decision making that follows.
For many attendees, the story reinforced a common theme: routine incidents become complex claims when facts emerge over time, documentation is incomplete, or critical details are not captured early in the process.
Others discussed the challenges of negotiating claims without complete information, and several attendees emphasized that by the time risk managers become involved, critical evidence has often disappeared.
Relationships Matter as Much as Processes
One of the strongest themes to emerge from the discussion was the importance of relationship building across departments.
Panelists repeatedly emphasized that successful risk management cannot operate in isolation. Building trust with fleet teams, law enforcement, department leaders, attorneys, and frontline employees before an incident occurs creates the foundation for faster reporting, stronger compliance, and better outcomes.
As several panelists noted, the first interaction between risk management and a department should not occur after a claim has already escalated.
Organizations that proactively engage stakeholders, provide ongoing education, and create open communication channels are often better positioned to manage incidents effectively when they occur.
Participants also noted that strong relationships help identify and mitigate risks before they become costly events, creating a culture where risk awareness becomes everyone’s responsibility.
Data Is More Than Reporting
Another recurring theme was the role of analytics.
Panelists highlighted the importance of understanding where losses originate, identifying trends, measuring costs, and using data to guide training and mitigation efforts. The conversation reinforced that organizations cannot improve what they cannot measure.
However, the discussion also revealed an important nuance: data alone is not enough.
Numbers become meaningful when they are translated into operational realities that leaders and employees can understand. Analytics should support conversations, not replace them.
As panelist Matt Phillips stated during the session:
“If just one person is hurt, it doesn’t matter whether there’s ten or one hundred or one thousand or five thousand, that one person is statistically significant.”
Organizations that successfully combine data with collaboration gain a clearer understanding of both risk exposure and improvement opportunities.
The Hidden Exposure Few Organizations Discuss
One particularly compelling discussion centered on reputational risk.
While financial losses are measurable, public trust can be much harder to recover.
Vehicle incidents involving public entities often attract scrutiny from taxpayers, elected officials, community leaders, and the media. Poor documentation, inconsistent processes, or preventable operational failures can create reputational consequences that extend well beyond the original claim.
For public sector organizations, protecting public confidence is just as important as managing repair costs and settlements.
Governance Is the Missing Link
Perhaps the most significant takeaway from the session was the recognition that governance plays a critical role in every stage of accident management.
Strong policies, consistent reporting procedures, standardized documentation, timely evidence collection, and clear accountability structures all contribute to stronger claim outcomes.
Without these controls, organizations often find themselves attempting to defend claims with incomplete information months or years after an incident occurred.
The organizations making the greatest progress are those that view accident management as a coordinated operational process rather than a series of disconnected tasks.
Connecting the Dots
What became clear throughout the discussion is that most organizations are not struggling because they lack dedicated people or strong intentions.
They struggle because critical information is fragmented across departments, systems, and timelines.
Fleet teams manage vehicles.
Risk teams manage claims.
Operations manage daily activities.
Leadership manages accountability.
Yet when an accident occurs, the information needed to protect the organization is often scattered across disconnected processes, making it difficult to establish facts, identify trends, respond quickly, and defend decisions months or years later.
That challenge is exactly why SHzoom developed UPtime.
UPtime helps public sector organizations create a connected operational record by bringing together vehicles, drivers, incidents, documentation, accountability, and analytics into a single source of truth.
By improving visibility across departments and creating greater operational continuity, organizations can strengthen governance, accelerate reporting, improve documentation quality, reduce claim costs, and minimize the hidden exposures that often emerge long after an incident occurs.
Looking Ahead
The discussion at PRIMA reinforced something we see every day at SHzoom:
Accidents are unavoidable. Unmanaged risk is not.
The future of risk management is not simply collecting more data. It is creating stronger connections between people, processes, and information.
Organizations that can capture the right information at the right time, make it accessible to the right stakeholders, and use it to drive better decisions will be far better positioned to reduce claims, improve operational efficiency, strengthen accountability, and protect public trust.
If your organization is looking to improve incident visibility, strengthen governance, and reduce risk exposure across fleet and operations, we invite you to see UPtime in action.
Schedule a Free Risk Assessment
We are grateful to the exceptional panelists and engaged attendees who contributed their experiences and insights. The conversation confirmed that while the challenges may vary from one organization to another, the path forward remains remarkably consistent:
- Better communication.
- Stronger governance.
- Greater accountability.
- A more proactive approach to risk.
Those are the conversations that move our industry forward.
And those are the challenges UPtime was built to solve.
Discover the Future of Accident Governance
See how UPtime helps organizations reduce repair costs, strengthen accountability, improve compliance, and create a defensible audit trail for every incident.
Schedule Your Ultimate UPtime User Experience Now.
