Telematics

Telematics is starting to revolutionise the way companies run vehicles and employees drive them.

Originally, ‘black boxes’ were fitted to commercial vehicles, but the technology is gradually being fitted to company cars.

The range of downloadable data is huge and gives managers cost and safety control over their fleets in real time.

For example, fleets using technology from Quartix can monitor employees’ driving style via a suite of reports that includes speed monitoring as well as incidences of harsh acceleration and braking.

As a result of drivers knowing they are being ‘watched’, says the company, they adapt their driving style, which reduces crash risk and has other benefits such as reduced vehicle wear and tear, lower CO2 emissions and fuel savings of up to 15%.

Andy Walters, managing director of Quartix, says: “Drivers are more observant of speed limits if they are being monitored.

But the technology also plots a driver’s speed versus the speeds of other vehicles on a similar stretch of road.

They can see that even if not breaking the speed limit, the average speed of other light commercial vehicles on the road was 40 mph at a particular time on a specific day, which may indicate that the driver was ‘pushing it’ and not taking account of conditions.”

Meanwhile, GreenRoad reports that its driver performance management technology, which includes recording ‘speeding violations’, cuts crash-related costs by 50-70%, while also delivering reductions in fuel use, vehicle maintenance and emissions.

“In our experience working with fleets of all sizes, speed management races up a fleet manager’s list of priorities when they understand the cost savings they can achieve,” says Andy Cozens, sales director at GreenRoad.

“When drivers keep their speeds moderate, they reduce fuel consumption as well as reducing risk.

"The knock-on effects of fewer crashes include less time lost to employee injury, less paperwork, fewer vehicles off the road for repair, less wear and tear and an effective way to combat the ever-increasing cost of insurance premiums.”

Driverless cars

Ultimately, all responsibility for driving may be taken by ‘intelligent vehicles’ that drive themselves.

Volvo, for example, is launching the world’s first large-scale autonomous driving pilot project, which will include 100 self-driving cars using public roads in everyday driving conditions around Gothenburg, in 2017.

The UK Government said in its 2013 update to the National Infrastructure Plan that it would review the legislative and regulatory framework for developing and testing driverless cars in the UK and publish a report by the end of 2014.

It plans to create a £10m prize for the development of a town or city as a testing ground.

Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander said: “At present, the main advances in driverless car technology are happening in California… the National Infrastructure Plan contains plans to put our country at the forefront of
driverless car technology.”