Despite the countless training sessions and talks with drivers, it’s an ongoing struggle for many fleets to correct poor driving performance.
Adam Kahn, chief business development officer at Netradyne, joined FreightWaves NOW to share his thoughts on fleet safety from a technological perspective. He believes the most effective way to see drivers improve is for managers to discuss their performance in full, shining the spotlight on both the good and the bad.
“Anyone who sits down for a performance review month after month after month, where every conversation is negative, eventually wouldn’t want to go to that meeting anymore,” Kahn said.
But traditional dash cams typically provide managers a very one-sided story, casting drivers mostly in a bad light.
What’s needed is a camera that shows the full story.
Driver•i is Netradyne’s fleet safety camera that monitors and trains drivers in real-time using artificial intelligence and machine-learning technology. With an eye on both the driver and the road, performance metrics are recorded in real-time, which helps keep managers on top of their drivers in a non-intrusive but constructive way.
Netradyne isn’t reinventing safety metrics. It’s putting driver performance in full context, which, in turn, is rewiring the way managers view their drivers. They’re now concerned about who’s doing the most good rather than which drivers are doing the least bad.
“Traditionally, safety systems are very focused on what the drivers are doing wrong, which might only be three to five minutes of their day,” Kahn said. “What I suggest is that fleet managers look into the full context of the day.”
Even if that means reviewing 500-plus minutes of a driver’s day, Kahn believes that every minute should be taken into consideration.
Driver•i sends drivers audible alerts when a negative event is identified like running a stop sign, but the dash cam also takes good driving habits into account too.
Say a driver is traveling at a safe speed and following distance with the vehicle in front of it when suddenly a driver in the left lane cuts in front of the truck. But instead of responding aggressively — blowing the horn and tailgating the offending vehicle — the trucker instead responds by creating more space between himself and the vehicle.
Situations like these don’t go unnoticed with Driver•i. In fact, drivers are rewarded for positive safety events with Driver Stars, which fleets can use as incentives for contests, bonuses, etc., to boost driver safety.
Kahn’s “gamification” of driver safety may have some merit, as Netradyne’s top 15 customers are generating 15-18 more Driver Stars for every severe hard-braking event recorded.
“That’s just given you 18 more opportunities to talk about the positives than the negatives,” Kahn said.
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