Fleet managers install dash cams in their trucks hoping video footage might provide useful insights. Without a plan to systematically analyze and act on the data though, most video footage ends up filed away and forgotten. To improve safety and productivity, fleets must have processes to capture dash cam data, generate insights, and enable operational changes.
Categorize and Score Events Captured on Video
The people at Idrive say that dash cams produce many hours of mundane footage alongside a few clips showing critical events. Managers cannot realistically review raw video streams from an entire commercial fleet tracking every truck. Instead, software helps detect and compile clips with possible incidents for human review.
Managers categorize events based on trip anomalies, driver behaviors like hard braking or sharp turns, audio outbursts, collisions, passenger actions, or third-party encounters. Customized scoring algorithms rank video segments on characteristics like risk severity, preventability, and management responsibility. High-risk incidents get prioritized for follow-up.
Analyze Events in Context for Root Causes
While software categorizes risky events, human specialists add analytic judgment. An aggressive left turn gets further evaluated considering factors like weather, visibility, traffic flows, road quality, vehicle issues, and other contextual variables that might explain the maneuver.
Understanding root causes behind driving behaviors leads to more effective corrective actions tailored to particular weaknesses. Coaching improves skills, route changes avoid hazards, vehicle issues get checked, or policies adjust to guide better decisions. Analyzing context stops simplistic judgments over complex on-road realities.
Mine Data Trends to Prioritize Systemic Issues
Analyzing isolated events helps address case-by-case incidents as they arise, but cumulatively evaluating dash cam data over months can reveal systemic issues affecting many drivers. Software aggregates categorized clips to identify trends around locations, weather conditions, vehicle attributes, or groups of drivers exhibiting similar behaviors.
For example, managers might discover a high incidence of hydroplaning incidents along a stretch of highway after summer storms. Insights like this justify priority changes like better signage, repaved road surfaces, seasonal speed limits, or improved driver training. Making roads safer for an entire commercial fleet pays continuous productivity dividends over patching individual problems.
Communicate Insights to Shape Driver Attitudes
Sharing dash cam insights across the workforce shapes cultural attitudes towards safety over time. Dash cam footage converts abstract discussions into visceral experiences that stick in driver minds. Seeing consequences of dangerous judgment calls made by peers discourages others from repeating mistakes.
Presentations also build empathy for driving realities behind the numbers. Clips conveying challenging conditions, structured feedback on better options, and praise showing role model behaviors opens perspectives. Communication makes statistics emotionally resonant to driver audiences. Over time, shared insights promote self-correction aligned to fleet safety goals.
Enable In-the-Moment Driver Feedback to Reinforce Change
The weeks or months between an incident and later safety reviews diminishes impact from footage insights. In-the-moment verbal feedback powered by real-time alerts reinforces learning. For example, sensors could detect a hard swerve and immediately trigger an audio warning referencing recent coaching on similar events.
Drivers recall context more clearly seconds after an event rather than from reports recounting months-old video clips. Instant feedback fortifies retention of safety learning and quicker skill improvements. Combining data-driven dash cam insights with in-cab warning systems accelerates behavior changes for faster risk reduction.
Conclusion
Dash cams generate abundant video. But without sound data practices to capture, categorize, score, analyze, mine, communicate and instantly act on insights, most footage serves little purpose. Following a process to methodically turn video into prioritized safety improvements yields continuous gains over time. Data-enabled learning reinforced through real-time signals sustains driver skill and attitude adjustments that make fleets safer.
