Are you trying to figure out a better way to use video to monitor and coach your truck drivers? Furthermore, did you know it is possible to bring your fleet intelligence to the next level with in-cab video? That’s right, these systems empower you to coach truck drivers to improve their behavior—before a collision occurs.
A video telematics fleet safety program delivers insightful information that can protect your company’s drivers, vehicles, reputation, and your bottom line. Using sensors on the vehicle, with a camera facing both the driver and the road ahead, triggered video devices capture potentially dangerous events like abrupt lane changes, hard braking, or situations when your driver is following other vehicles too closely that could lead to a collision.
Why Does It Matter?
Capturing these moments on video shows you what happened, and even more importantly, why they happened so you can effectively coach drivers. With event-triggered video footage, you are better equipped to show drivers how to improve reactions, exonerate them in the case of a false claim, and gain deep data insights for a safer and more cost-efficient fleet.
Video provides more efficient and effective coaching opportunities. Like game film for professional athletes, video event recorders are helping fleet managers pinpoint unsafe behaviors and identify opportunities to coach drivers before a crash happens. Using event recorders to coach drivers can also help you:
- Capture good performance to recognize your best drivers
- Strengthen your company’s safety culture
- Accelerate training of new or inexperienced drivers
- Decrease driver turnover and improve HR effectiveness Reduce unsafe behaviors to generate cost savings
Video-based fleet safety programs help fleet and safety managers build the ultimate driver coaching toolkit with tailored training opportunities that can be delivered in person or remotely.
What Should You Focus On?
We talk a lot about big data. It can be easy to sink under the load. That is why you need to focus on only the data you need, when you need it. Video collected by event-based recorders show you precisely what you need to see, recording 8 seconds before and 4 seconds after the event so you’re not burdened with excess footage. Truck drivers often go several days without triggering a video event, and on average, a driver will trigger fewer than five minutes of video per month.
What can you use video for?
- Opportunities for tailored driver coaching
- Improvements in driver safety
- Reduction in speeding, distracted driving and other unsafe behaviors
- Ability to exonerate drivers from false claims
- Security for drivers who can trigger video manually, when needed
- Decreased costs through fewer collisions, better fuel economy, and improved maintenance
- Increased opportunities to recognize drivers for good driving behaviors
- Improve productivity
What should you be on the lookout for?
- Data overload with endless amounts of video to sift through
- A solution that is difficult to implement or install on vehicles
- Only a disciplinary tool—instead, use it as an educational opportunity to improve safe driving behaviors
It is easy for fleet safety managers to become over reliant on a tool. It can also be easy for a tool to be used improperly. Ensure your due diligence when you are setting up a video program.
Put the Focus on Your Truck Drivers
Distracted driving and other roadway hazards put your truck drivers at risk every day. Ensure their well-being with a safety program that helps keep them safe. These days, so many of these software services are ubiquitous. Truck drivers are used to them.
Video-based safety programs can serve as a proactive tool to identify and reduce unsafe behaviors, according to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). While data from telematics reports alone may be useful, being able to view event footage of your truck drivers’ behaviors gives you a deeper understanding of individual driver profiles.
Video-based systems help you improve collision preparedness. In an incident, everything happens fast. By the time a truck driver can assess the situation, a lot may have changed: cars have moved, witnesses have left, and the other party could be preparing a different story. Unfortunately, a vehicle bearing big brand names is often a target for the blame.
By equipping vehicles with video event recording technology, you can potentially have a better understanding of the collision, which may help exonerate your truck driver and save your company’s reputation. It might also go a long way to limiting litigation damages.
Remove the ‘He said, she said’
Video footage removes the “he said, she said” stories and presents the cold, hard facts. Even when one of your fleet drivers may have been at fault, video event recorders often give you the ability to settle claims faster because you have the collision information immediately available. This information can help expedite the legal process, potentially saving your fleet hundreds or thousands of dollars in legal and court fees.
On the flipside, you can use the video to better motivate your people. Reinforce safe driving habits by recognizing your great drivers. To start, a good driver recognition program must include a defined scoring system, i.e. a formula for how drivers can earn recognition.
With video, good driving events can be tracked daily, or over set periods of time. Truck drivers can be recognized for good driving events such as quick reactions in unavoidable near-collisions, extended periods with no incidents, or for demonstrating rapid improvement. Some companies share these videos at safety meetings (if the driver is comfortable with them doing so), while others may provide a reward to recognize continuous exceptional behavior.
The best programs take into consideration what their employees really desire, which may vary from person to person. The list below shows several different types of truck driver reward categories:
- Material rewards: Trophies, certificates, or prizes chosen from a catalog, or upgrading a driver’s vehicle or equipment.
- Monetary rewards: Bonus checks, pay raises, or personal use charges could be reduced or forgiven for a specific period.
- Public recognition: Feature them in a newsletter, call them on stage at a company meeting, feature them on your website, treat them to lunch with the CEO, or a hang a photo and plaque in the break room.
Win with Higher Productivity and Efficiency
Benefits of video telematics extend beyond safety to help deliver improved efficiency and productivity. These benefits touch all aspects of your organization. Technological investments of these kind pay off in the long run.
Your commercial motor vehicles are at the core of your business and running your fleet efficiently should always be top of mind. There are ways that a video-telematics fleet safety program can help your fleet run at maximum efficiency and productivity.
Fewer collisions reduce repair costs and time out of service. Video telematics capabilities provide insight into the truck driver behaviors that cause events like speeding, lane departure, hard-braking, rapid acceleration, and hard cornering—so you can coach drivers on safer driving practices. A safer driver means reduced risk and number of collisions.
By reducing potential collisions, you’re also reducing repair and vehicle replacement costs— increasing vehicle uptime and keeping your vehicles on the road where they belong. Back office work can decrease when you spend less time managing insurance claims, as well. Trust us, your back office will thank you later.
Wear-and-tear on vehicles may decrease as well. You may see a need for fewer brake replacements or tire repairs, for example. Simply put, less maintenance means more vehicle uptime. And all of this comes from the small kernel of opportunity provided by video.
And remember, safe driving leads to less fuel usage. Beyond safety, extensive industry data has shown a direct connection to driving behavior and fuel efficiency. While oil prices may be low now, that will not be the case forever.
Find the Right Program
There are video safety programs that offer a fuel management enhancement that focuses on three behaviors with the greatest impact on fuel efficiency: “smooth” driving, idling, and speeding. Truck drivers should get in-cab feedback and be given a fuel score ranking, in addition to idling reports. With this behavior-based solution, a motor carrier can improve the fleet’s overall fuel efficiency by up to twelve percent. Depending on the size of the fleet, this can mean hundreds to thousands of dollars saved every month.
Integrated tracking with fuel data can also help with fuel tax reporting. This can significantly lower your overall administrative burden, and your truck drivers can spend less time keeping track of receipts and focus on the job at hand.
And leaner routes drive productivity. Vehicle tracking provides real-time status updates on vehicle location, trip history, stop and start durations, and mileage. This information helps you see whether a driver stayed on task or made personal stops along the way
Tracking travel data means being able to identify the less efficient routes. Chipping away even just a few miles from each driver’s day can result in a big jump in number of services completed and your fleet’s overall productivity.
When video, fleet tracking, and fuel monitoring come together in a single integrated solution, your job of managing and reporting on important metrics will be that much easier. Not only is your fleet more efficient and productive, but so are your reports. Now that’s business intelligence.
from Quick Transport Solutions Trucking Blog https://ift.tt/2Zsthbl
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