If you’re a fleet professional researching in-cab cameras for your vehicles, you’ve probably noticed an incredibly wide array of options. Even if you’ve narrowed your search to just smart cameras equipped with various forms of Artificial Intelligence, you’re still drowning in choices.
Many of these cameras will sound similar in their resolution, run time, and other features. They also have a similar intent: to react to unsafe driving.
Driver•i takes that a step further. Rather than react to unsafe driving, it automatically analyzes every minute on the road so that you can dedicate your time to coaching your drivers rather than watching hours of video. This will ensure that your safety program prevents accidents from happening in the first place as opposed to watching videos of issues over and over.
Driver•i can detect who is at fault automatically and inform management in real-time.
Here are the three key features of Driver•i that make it a better choice for fleet professionals who prioritize safety.
Edge Computing: Faster, Less Expensive, Saves Time
Cloud computing is great, right? It allows you to run applications without loading them onto your devices. That’s the direction we’ve been heading for awhile. But it’s prone to lags, speed bumps, and connectivity.
But edge computing – where applications run as closely as possible to where the data is generated – is faster. It can improve challenges associated with connectivity, bandwidth, and latency, to name just a few.
Rather than transferring large amounts of data over a network (which can add to your costs), edge computing devices process information locally before evaluating, tagging, and uploading it to the cloud.
Driver•i and its edge computing capabilities will assess your drivers faster, cheaper, and more securely than cloud-only devices.
The Full Picture of Driver Behaviors
There’s a reason why many drivers don’t like the idea of fleet dash cams.
They don’t want to be criticized for their driving habits.
That’s valid. Most cameras, even those equipped with a form of AI, only show a tiny sliver of what happens on the road. Those tiny slivers are, invariably, severe incidents triggered by the driver’s behavior. That usually means speeding, hard stops, or collisions. Other AI systems only show severe incidents. Some even require you to watch the videos or have others manually review footage for you. This process is error-prone and time-consuming. And it doesn’t put incidents in context.
The Driver•i smart camera is the result of re-thinking that method of evaluation. Rather than being used to look over drivers’ shoulders, Driver•i only shares certain events. This can mean unsafe actions, as well as a driver’s good habits, while also putting context into events other cameras would report as unsafe:
- Driver•i awards Driver Stars when drivers, for example, slow down to let another driver merge while entering the highway or moving over to make space for a vehicle parked on the shoulder of a road.
- If your driver stopped hard to avoid a child running into a street, most smart cameras would simply trigger that as unsafe driving. The Driver•i adds the context of the child in the street and awards a Driver Star in this situation.
In one study, a Driver•i camera was compared to a competitor’s AI fleet camera. Both cameras were mounted in the same vehicle for 30 days. Both cameras witnesses more than 6,900 minutes of drivetime.
The competitor’s camera only offered visibility into a few moments of drive time related to severe alerts the driver generated. Driver•i found that the driver was in the Greenzone (moderate and good driving) for more than two-thirds of the drive time. It also recorded violations for Posted Speed, Following Distance, Traffic Lights, Stop Signs, and U-turns that the other camera never reported.
In short, the Driver•i smart camera creates a more-complete picture of your drivers’ skills, judgment, and attentiveness.
Advanced Fact-Based Coaching
With Driver•i cameras automatically evaluating your drivers and alerting you based on your preferences, you can concentrate on the bigger picture of improving driver behavior – all without manually sifting through hours of irrelevant footage each day.
Here are some ways Driver•i allows you to transform your approach to driver coaching.
- Identifying Common Hazardous Behaviors – Driver•i automatically displays the most-common safety violations including Driver Distraction, Following Distance, Traffic Light Violations, At-Fault Detection, and more. It’s possible to break this out by fleet and individual to discover trends. You’ll also be able to see your fleet’s overall monthly scores; Driver•i stores data for 12 months, which allows meaningful comparisons over time.
- Rewarding Safe Driving – We mentioned earlier that many drivers are uncomfortable about cameras because most can only show them at their worst. The Driver Stars and GreenZone stats (which shows how much time drivers spend driving safely) allow you to reward drivers. Some fleets award gift cards to their top drivers each month. Knowing that perks and recognition are possible can help with employee buy-in to using cameras.
- Tracking Your Coaching Sessions – Driver•i automatically evaluates your drivers’ actions. But it also stores that data for coaching and trend analysis. You’ll be able to see your highest-scoring drivers over time, so you can track improvements and see how employees are responding to feedback.
There’s another important point to address about identifying problematic driving habits. You can use those insights to create safety goals for your fleet. Driver•i will allow you to track progress toward those goals at a fleet and individual basis.
If this sounds like a lot of work, keep in mind that Driver•i does the hard work automatically. You won’t have to sift through footage, count up safety incidents, or determine what really happened on your own.
Summing up the Driver•i Smart Camera Difference
With so many fleet dash cams on the market, it can be hard to figure out what’s different about them. Even if you separate our smart AI dash cams from the more basic cameras, you still have a lot of homework to do.
So consider asking your potential providers what their camera can do to show the context of why a driver had an event and acknowledge good driving behavior. That answer will give you valuable insight into whether a camera is designed to react to accidents or prevent them in the first place as the Driver•i does.
Need more information about smart cameras? Be sure to read our Complete Guide to In-Cab Cameras.
