Fleet Management News & Business Info | Commercial Carrier Journal
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/772176
56 commercial carrier journal | january 2017 TECHNOLOGY: NEXT-GENERATION DRIVER TRAINING Directed training Instructional Technologies Inc., developer of Pro- Tread online driver training courses, has been working with telematics providers and their fleet customers to assign Pro-Tread training courses automatically based on critical safety events. Dr. Jim Voor- hees, chief executive of ITI, mentioned the possibility of automatically assigning training to events captured by Telogis Coach, an optional app for the Telogis cloud-based fleet manage- ment platform. Fleets use Telogis Coach to give drivers real-time feed- back and alerts for safety and performance. Once Telogis Coach catches an ex- ception such as speed- ing or harsh braking, a Pro-Tread training module could be as- signed automatically to the driver to complete, Voorhees says. Gorilla Safety offers a mobile fleet manage- ment system that comes with electronic logs, driver vehicle inspec- tion reports, document management, accident reporting and more fea- tures. The system also includes a scorecard feature for drivers and managers. The scorecard can be viewed by drivers on their in-cab mobile devices and provides instant alerts and a summary view of their safety and compliance performance. The score- card is designed to fix problems in real time rather than through a reactive response from management. "If you give some type of alert or notification in the cab, that changes behavior," says Tommy Johnson, co-founder of Gorilla Safety. "at is the way we are all wired. It is aggra- vating to hear a beep, and you will be conscious of that." Gorilla Safety is developing an automated write-up process for when drivers operate outside a fleet's safe- ty and compliance parameters. An instant notification would be sent to a fleet manager, who then would choose one of three possible responses to streamline the process. The manager could press option 1 to write up the driv- er, option 2 to ignore it and enter notes to explain why, or option 3 to train the driver by sending him a text or Word document explaining the company's policy. "We want to make a manager's life as easy as possible," says Mark Walton, co-founder of Gorilla Safety. Training on demand The possibilities to automate driver training go be- yond performance and safety. Drivers can be assigned a learning module in advance of a planned event, such as a specific type of load or route. EBE Technologies' Ships driver management platform is designed to automate training assignments based on predetermined out-of-standard criteria for driver safety and performance metrics – harsh braking, excessive idling and speeding – that is reported by fleet telematics and other data collection systems. Fleets also can use Ships to schedule move-specif- ic driver training based on dispatch activities such as customer, commodity or stop codes. A driver delivering a hazmat load could be required to watch a short hazmat training video before picking up the load. e Ships platform works in unison with EBE's Learning Management System to assign digital training courses to drivers according to a fleet's business rules. e LMS can assign training content that is developed by a fleet in-house or by a third-party content provider. Ships has a company-specific Driver Portal used by fleets to give drivers a single interface to manage their training assignments and other workflow and commu- nications, says Cindy Nelson, EBE's vice president of marketing and business development. e amount of real-time driver safety and performance data will continue to increase. With more information to manage, technology suppliers are providing more ways to help fleets close the loop without human involvement. The Telogis Coach app is an automated tool for driver performance reporting. Gorilla Safety's fleet management system is available for iOS and Android devices.