Anything to make the life of a transport manager or fleet operator easier has got to be a good thing, right? That certainly seems to be the case with the availability of data when it comes to improving safety and, ultimately, reducing fleet downtime. Especially when it can be used and acted upon before an accident or incident takes place.
“Data is fundamental to helping businesses – it underpins everything they do in terms of decision making,” says Barney Goffer, UK product manager at Teletrac Navman. “It's the starting point of knowing where something is either going well or going wrong. And, from a safety perspective, we want to know when something's either at risk or has gone wrong, ultimately.
“Traditional telematics data has been around for years, but AI and video telematics has changed the game and made it easier and quicker for fleet managers to get to insights or an outcome of a situation.”
Teletrac Navman recently conducted a survey around the subject of distracted driving and, from 421 respondents, more than 30% reported real challenges in managing and using data effectively to deal with concentration behind the wheel. However, 90% of fleet managers questioned acknowledged that data is crucial to managing their business. “They can‘t live without it, which backs up my point about it being fundamental to everything that they do,” adds Goffer.
What Teletrac Navman proposes to help fleets use the data most effectively is a dashboard that provides as much relevant and timely data as possible. “We want to get to a point where you can prevent incidents happening in real time. And that‘s where we leap forward and think about camera technology and the data we‘re ingesting through our AI capabilities. That means asking questions such as how close am I to the vehicle in front? Am I smoking in the cab?,” says Goffer.
“These are all still data points that we‘re pulling into our system and we‘re alerting the driver through the AI algorithms that we‘ve developed to help coach the driver in real time. We still want the retrospective data, but the big thing for safety these days is the ability to respond in real time, or to deal with a situation more effectively with this advanced technology.”
UP IN THE CLOUDS
Further help is at hand for fleet managers from Durite – or it will be later this year when the company introduces Durite Live Cloud (or DLC), a software as a service (SaaS) product that forms the heart of a new video telematics platform.
DLC replaces an existing product that has been on the market for eight years, in which time, technology – and vehicles – have moved on a bit. The new product features an upgraded mobile digital video recording device (MDVR), a slimline SSD chipset and artificial intelligence capabilities (AI).
The overall goal is to try and stay one step ahead of any issues on the road but also improve the overall quality and ability of the drivers and the safety of other road users.
“The biggest benefit of the new system is that the MDVR has AI built into the unit, which works with ADAS features such as forward collision warning, lane departure warning, speed sign recognition and pedestrian detection,” explains Richard Cockrill, product manager at Durite.
“Our hardware enables live-streaming via the 4G network integrated into the SaaS software, effectively, updating in real time. If you’ve got a fleet of up to 100 vehicles, it’s quite hard to monitor them all effectively, but the idea behind our platform is to enable AI to work as the fleet manager’s agent and be preventative, rather than reactive.”
That means quickly and easily identifying driving events when drivers’ scores drop, depending on the situation and how different scenarios are weighted. “The weighting can be adjusted for each individual fleet, because there might be specific issues across the board with harsh braking or speeding, for example,” says Cockrill.
“The AI is actually able to simulate all of the scenarios and share information with the fleet manager or transport manager about which drivers might require some extra training to bring up their scores.”
Camera technology is another area that has seen big leaps made, with the ability to provide large amounts of useful data, too. “The forward-facing cameras that monitor lane departure enables transport managers to see exactly how a driver is performing and look at ways to be more proactive around safety,” says Cockrill.
“With the driver-facing camera, while the drivers don’t really like it, it’s there to protect them and help them. We had an incident recently where a woman claimed the truck driver was on the phone at the time of an accident. But he wasn‘t on the phone – she hit the side of his lorry and he’s got data from the camera to prove it.” Cockrill says the system is currently undergoing testing but should be on the market later this year.
TEMPERATURE TROUBLES
Helping to improve safety through one specific area of the truck – wheels and tyres – Wheely-Safe’s combined in-motion wheel loss detection system features advanced brake/hub temperature monitoring and an intelligent TPMS. The four main goals of the system are: to reduce fleet downtime; achieve fuel savings; extend tyre life; and increase safety and duty of care.
The company is currently in the process of launching a fully connected system, following extensive field trials involving a large number of fleets. In effect, the system will allow a flexible level of predictive maintenance and driver alert levels, based on the specific operation.
“We are allowing the engineers or the fleet operator to set their own parameters so that they are aware of a situation developing before the driver alarms kick in,” explains Gary Thomas, director at Wheely-Safe.
“One of the key benefits of that is that it now allows the operator to jump on a particular issue before it becomes a breakdown or a major failure. Therefore, it can save a fortune on breakdowns. Tyres, for example, are now the biggest cause of breakdowns globally, so being aware of a situation with a tyre before it becomes a ‘parked’ vehicle is massive.”
Like Teletrac Navman and Durite, the Wheely-Safe solution relies on a dashboard that displays a wide range of datasets in different categories relating to the health and status of individual tyres, such as temperature and pressure – all recorded from a series of sensors.
“If there’s a particular failure on one sensor it will flash up red, so the fleet manager will know straight away which tyre has an issue,” explains Thomas. “With the dashboard, users are able to go specifically into that sensor and analyse the data related to temperature and pressure fluctuations for that particular sensor.”
A pre-alert in the form of a visible flash on the dashboard has been built into the system in the event of a 12% drop in pressure. When the pressure drop reaches 20%, there’s an audible alarm and instruction for the driver to pull over. “Those are preset levels for the driver, but fleet engineers can set their different parameter levels, so that they are made aware of a situation before it reaches amber level,” explains Thomas.
“That allows them to take action and look at the data for a particular sensor in real time, because information is transmitted every two minutes. The beauty of the system is that fleets can jump on a problem early – say, a hub problem before the parts in the hub start failing. So, they can take the hub apart and make a repair, so that you don’t have to replace it.”
The amount of data that will be made available to truck fleets shows no signs of stopping, with Thomas believing the potential value in electronic brake performance monitoring systems will be one to watch.
“It’s another great idea, because you‘re getting the data from both the hub and the braking area,” he reasons. “And it is saving money in having to take the trailer off the road and running roller brake tests to find out the problem.”
