Fleet Management News & Business Info | Commercial Carrier Journal
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/303000
54 COMMERCIAL CARRIER JOURNAL | MAY 2014 TECHNOLOGY: DRIVER TRAINING and adaptive cruise control system called OnGuard that today is in about 60,000 tractors. Overall, about 8 percent of tractors on the road have collision mitigation technology, says Jon Morrison, president and general manager. OnGuard detects forward objects and measures the vehi- cle's position in relation to others on the road to warn the driver of a possible rear-end collision. When appropriate, the system will apply the brakes to help avoid a collision or mitigate an unavoidable one. Meritor Wabco also has a forward-looking vision-based lane departure warning system called OnLane. The system monitors road markings and the vehicle's position in the lane and delivers audible warnings to the driver if the vehicle leaves its lane unintentionally. Soon after releasing OnGuard in 2008, Meritor Wabco management began thinking about how to round out its integrated safety systems with data and analytics to monitor for risky driving behaviors. Historically, fleets using similar products had to download data manually. In some cases, fleets started to transmit it wirelessly from trucks through onboard communication systems such as Omnitracs and PeopleNet. Until this year, Meritor Wabco was focused primarily on vehicle electronics and mechanics, but that changed with the announcement of ProView. Its newest offering captures and transmits video-based event data to focus on the driver side, Morrison says. "In order to really get stronger acceptance and to round out the value offering of our integrated safety package, we thought this is a great direction for us to take," he says. Meritor Wabco is working with SmartDrive Systems to de- velop ProView, a comprehensive performance management system that integrates information from braking and stabil- ity control technologies with a video-based event recording device and Web-based driver risk management service. By leveraging this information, fleet operators can gain in- sights into driving events to determine what happened, when and why vehicle safety systems engaged and the potential driver-related root causes. In addition to providing a gateway to driver analytics through SmartDrive, ProView will have online content and resources and will serve as a repository for social media and other forms of active dialogue between Meritor Wabco, fleets and drivers to help the end user – the driver – understand how these technologies work together. "We want to be able to have a dialogue and be able to help in the training, education and acceptance of safety systems," Morrison says. SMARTDRIVE SYSTEMS SmartDrive Systems also supplies a windshield-mounted de- vice that records inward and outward video of critical safety events. The device also connects to the vehicle's communi- cation channels to capture a detailed play-by-play account of throttle, brake position, rpms and other event data from active safety systems for lane departure warning, collision avoidance and roll stability. All event data is transmitted wirelessly to an operations center and reviewed by SmartDrive staff. After review, vid- eo-based event data is available to fleet management through a Web-based portal. The service delivers insights, recom- mendations and workflow tools to help fleet managers coach drivers on how to improve their skills. The risky driving behaviors identified by SmartDrive's staff are scored and categorized so that fleets can track improvements over time to see how both drivers and the company are improving in areas such as speeding, distrac- tion, fatigue and maintaining proper following distance. The system also consolidates event data into driver skills profiles and a SmartDriver Score for management to priori- tize site locations, business groups and other company divi- sions based on who is most at risk and to recognize drivers and managers for good performance. One way to increase driver acceptance of the technology is to emphasize that it will be used in a constructive fash- ion as a training tool, not for disciplinary actions to catch drivers doing something wrong, says Jason Palmer, president of SmartDrive. Drivers also benefit from having the system exonerate them from wrongdoing by having an accurate representation of what happened during the event. Bozutto's, a wholesale distributor of food and household products to retailers in 13 New England and Mid-Atlantic states, is in its third year of using SmartDrive. To say the Meritor Wabco is working with SmartDrive Systems to develop ProView, a com- prehensive performance management system. SmartDrive Systems delivers insights, recommendations and workflow tools to help fleet managers coach drivers on how to improve their skills.