INAIL discounts the premium for companies that cut road risk. Almost nobody claims it for the commute.
The OT23 2027 form gives more weight to commuting accidents, while reduction applications keep clustering elsewhere.
by Paolo Barbato
In 2024 INAIL recorded 1,228 reported accidents with a fatal outcome, and more than one in three happened on the road: 19.63% while commuting with a means of transport and 17.92% during work with a means of transport, for a total of 37.55% of reported deaths.
The home-to-work journey alone accounts for 25% of all deaths reported to the Institute, whereas in 2000, the year in which insurance cover for commuting accidents was introduced, that share stood at 15%. Over the same period commuting claims went from just over 35,000 to 101,805, with an incidence that in 2024 stands at 425 cases per 100,000 workers.
Behind these numbers are people who leave home in the morning to go to work and do not arrive, or do not come back. The distinction between an accident that happens at the company and an accident that happens on the journey makes sense in insurance and statistical terms, but it makes none for the family of the person left lying on the road, and those who work on corporate mobility work on exactly this part of the risk.
The figure that should shape priorities concerns gender: among the workers who lose their lives to road risk, for women commuting accidents account for 47% of fatal cases against 21% for men, according to the 2023-2024 two-year average. It is not a matter of a higher absolute number of female victims, but of the fact that when a female worker dies at work it happens far more often on the road home, which means that acting on commuting protects to a greater degree precisely the most exposed group.
The gap between where the risk sits and where the discount is claimed
The July regulatory update should be read against this background, arriving while companies look for the discount on their insurance premium almost everywhere except here. In 2025, 30,841 companies obtained the reduction of the INAIL average tariff rate, for total savings of more than 211 million euros, but around 80% of applications concern section E of the form, the one on organisational measures: certified management systems, organisational models, attestations. The section dedicated to road risk remains marginal.
The gap between where the risk is concentrated and where companies go looking for the reduction is therefore fairly evident. The OT23 form published on 24 July for the year 2027 narrows it on the supply side, and it is now up to companies to narrow it on the demand side.
How the reduction works
Article 23 of the Modalità per l’applicazione delle Tariffe dei premi (interministerial decree of 27 February 2019) grants a reduction of the average tariff rate to companies that carry out prevention measures going beyond legal obligations, and every year INAIL publishes the OT23 form to list which measures count.
The percentage depends on the size of the territorial insurance position, measured in worker-years over the three-year period: 28% up to 10, 18% from 10.01 to 50, 10% from 50.01 to 200 and 5% above 200, while in the first two years of activity a fixed rate of 8% applies. To this reduction is then added any reduction for a favourable accident record, given that the two are not alternatives.
The timing mechanism, however, matters more than the percentage, because the measures must be carried out in the calendar year before the one in which the application is submitted. For OT23 2027 this means measures carried out in 2026 and an online application by 1 March 2027, which leaves anyone reading this article in August four months still available to set in motion something that can be reported, while anyone reading it in January would already be thinking about 2028.
Why INAIL has shifted the weight onto road risk
The 2027 form keeps six sections for a total of 65 items, 35 of type A and 30 of type B, and dedicates section B to road risk prevention.
The reason stated by the Institute is the increase in road accidents, including commuting ones. Director general Marcello Fiori linked the update of the form to the growing weight of road accidents in the overall accident picture, indicating as the objective that of rewarding company choices that reduce human error at the wheel (press release of 24 July).
“Accidents that happen on the road – stresses Inail’s director general, Marcello Fiori – are one of the emergencies on which we are concentrating our attention. Their weight in the overall accident picture is constantly increasing and the update of the OT23 form is meant to send a clear signal to businesses: fitting your own vehicles with technologies that limit human error is no longer just good practice, it is a choice that can save lives. That is why we decided to give more value to these choices”
The data behind this choice are those produced by INAIL’s Consulenza Statistico Attuariale and presented at the 26ª Conferenza Nazionale sul Mobility Management last June, and they outline three elements that deserve attention from anyone working on corporate mobility.
The first concerns the trajectory of the phenomenon, given that the provisional figures for the first four months of 2026 mark an 11% increase on the same period in 2025, going from 27,440 to 30,573 cases. The second concerns the distribution over time, because a quarter of road accidents occur between 7 and 9 in the morning and three quarters in the first four days of the week, which are the coordinates of systematic commuting rather than of generic traffic. The third concerns the severity of the consequences, since accidents involving a means of transport produce permanent impairments in 12.7% of compensated cases against 8.5% of those without a means of transport, with a rate of fatal outcomes five times higher.
What a Mobility Manager can set in motion
The operational part requires reading the form and not just the press release, because the measures are classified as type A and type B according to their preventive value, and to obtain the reduction you need one type A measure or two type B ones. This rule changes the way the dossier has to be built.
Section B contains two items that fall directly within the remit of the Mobility Manager (MM). B-1, of type B, covers the collective home-to-work transport service supplementing public transport, and the form is explicit about what counts: shuttles organised with external firms or with company staff, a connection between the arrival points of public transport and the site, night runs. The service must have been active in 2026 even if the contract may predate it, and the documentation required includes the contract with the transport firm, indicating vehicles, routes and times, together with the payment invoice.
B-2, also of type B, covers instead measures to improve the safety of road infrastructure near the workplace, from traffic lights to lighting, from pedestrian crossings to roundabouts and cycle lanes, on condition that they are carried out in implementation of agreements or conventions with the competent authorities. What is needed, then, is the signed convention and documentary proof of completion in 2026. It should be borne in mind that, both being of type B, these two items produce the reduction only if presented together.
Outside section B but within the same reasoning there is D-4, which, being of type A, is sufficient on its own and concerns the theoretical and practical safe driving course for workers who use motor vehicles in their work. The threshold is precise, because it requires that in 2026 at least 30% of the staff engaged in road haulage or otherwise using company vehicles have been trained, and the form specifies ten topics the course must cover as well as requiring documentary evidence of the trainers’ competence.
Finally there is B-3, also of type A, which concerns the installation of at least three non-mandatory safety devices on all company vehicles that lack them, including intelligent speed assistance, driver drowsiness warning, emergency braking and lane keeping. It has to be considered that the condition of installation on all vehicles makes it particularly demanding for large fleets and more feasible for small ones.
The argument to take to senior management
What makes this update interesting is not the discount percentage, given that for a company above 200 worker-years the reduction stops at 5%, a number that on its own does not justify a project. What is interesting is rather the fact that a third-party body has certified that the home-to-work journey sits within the perimeter of workplace safety, attaching to that certification a measurable economic consequence, and anyone in a company who has struggled to explain why commuting deserves attention now has a public document to put on the table.
There is then a practical convergence worth noting, because the measures that count in OT23 are the same ones a corporate mobility plan already produces, from shuttles to agreements with local authorities on the infrastructure for access to the site, through to measures on the fleet. Anyone with a structured plan has therefore probably already carried out something reportable without knowing it.
The constraint, as always, lies upstream: to know whether a shuttle is needed and on which route, you need reliable and accurate data on the actual travel of employees. A company that knows only the postcode of its workforce is not able to design a service that anyone will use, and consequently has nothing to report in March.
The fact remains that 80% of reduction applications still go through section E, and these are companies that have certified a management system, which is a good indicator of organisational maturity on safety. The same maturity, applied to the journey employees make every morning between 7 and 9, is today worth exactly the same reduction.
Sources: INAIL, press release of 24 July 2026; OT23/2027 form (version of 17 July 2026) and completion guide; analyses by INAIL’s Consulenza Statistico Attuariale presented at the 26ª Conferenza Nazionale sul Mobility Management, Rome, 8 June 2026; INAIL Open Data and Statistical Archives updated to 31 October 2025.
Paolo Barbato is the CEO and co-founder of Wiseair. He is an expert in Mobility Management, design and analysis of corporate mobility.