By Don Mitchell
I was watching Star Trek the Next Generation on Netflix the other day (don’t judge me), and I got to thinking. Isn’t it wild that the character Data, the friendly Enterprise android, can comb through millions of pages of information in mere minutes? Real life, of course, is nothing like a day on the Starship Enterprise. To boost fleet safety, you need access to the right data at the right time—without having to complete super-human feats.
The right telematics and fleet management solution gives you near-instant access to the data you need, without turning your operations upside down.
Read on to learn how you can use telematics and fleet management software to boost fleet safety with less time, effort, and expense.
Get Good Commercial Dash Cameras
Commercial dash cameras are essential for accident prevention. Not only do they boost fleet safety, but they also provide hard evidence to uphold innocence in court. The trouble is, many commercial dash cameras only provide forward-facing video, but sideswipe accidents are more common than forward collisions.
When choosing a commercial dash camera, look for a device that takes video footage from all angles, for a complete picture of what happened.
Preventing distracted driving is also a critical piece in the fleet safety puzzle. To address this issue, Transflo’s dash cams feature an optional cab-facing camera with a beam that bounces off a driver’s retina. If the driver looks away from the camera for a few seconds—if they nod off or look at their phone—an alert will sound. Cab-facing cameras are not required but offer additional safety features for the fleets that want it.
In the event of an accident, the Transflo Mobile+ platform allows you to:
- Correspond with the driver and gather post-accident information (pictures, the accident report, etc.) and bring it together behind one single pane of glass.
- See the camera footage for the vehicle, the info the driver provided, and all the telematics data within the Transflo digital ecosystem.
- Easily recreate the accident scene and quickly learn what led to the crash.
If the data shows something like a driver engaging in hard braking, that’s an opportunity for coaching. If the data shows that the driver was cut off by a motorcycle, then no additional training or coaching may be needed.
A robust fleet management solution delivers the real-time data you need to improve driver engagement, training, and coaching.
LEARN MORE ABOUT TRANSFLO’S DASH CAMERAS
Use Reliable Truck Navigation
According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safetyi, 32 percent of deaths associated with large trucks in 2019 occurred on interstates and freeways. If a driver is lost, they’re more likely to speed, change lanes, and enter/exit the freeway in search of their destination. All that increases the risk of a crash. Accurate, reliable GPS truck navigation and the ability to bypass weigh stations reduces offramp and onramp usage, lowering the risk of accidents.
GPS truck navigation and weigh station bypass create a path for drivers to head confidently in the right direction.
Transflo’s truck navigation, powered by CoPilot Truck, helps drivers confidently find their way and avoid unnecessary obstacles. It finds barriers like low bridges, narrow roads, sharp turns, and dead-ends and removes them from the routes on the GPS map. Transflo Mobile+ offers a weigh station bypass feature too (powered by Drivewyze), helping drivers streamline their day and get on their way.
LEARN MORE ABOUT TRUCK ROUTING
Get the Best ELDs
According to the FMCSA, ELDs save 26+ lives a year and prevent around 1,844 accidents and 562 injuries.
For fleet safety, electronic logging devices (ELDs) are crucial. American carriers are required to use ELDs registered and certified by the FMCSA. Now that the Canadian ELD mandate has dropped, our cousins across the border have followed suit.
With Transflo’s T-Series ELDs powered by Geotab, fleet safety is simple. You can set up alerts for hard braking, hard turns, speeding, and more within the telematics platform. It features real-time reporting to the fleet and 1000+ customizable report templates too. The data from these reports feeds into the drivers’ scorecards, for added convenience.
Transflo T-Series ELDs give you complete visibility into driver behavior with:
- Violation alerts and notifications based on engine data
- Fuel consumption and route analysis
- Precise vehicle diagnostics
- Map-based, real-time GPS truck tracking
- In-app HOS graphs and electronic logs
LEARN MORE ABOUT TRANSFLO T-SERIES ELDs
Smart Execution: Look for an ELD provider with a full fleet management solution—so you can manage routes, loads, paperwork, payroll, and broker and driver communication too.
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Activate Trailer Trackers
Trailer trackers help you reduce yard accidents, improve fleet safety, and ultimately save money.
Let’s say you have 100 drivers in your fleet. If you’re losing $15 a week per driver for events that could be resolved with trailer trackers, that could add up to $78,000 in lost fleet revenue every year. If your drivers are losing time troubleshooting these incidents, then they’re losing a significant chunk of their earnings over time too. This can lead to frustration and increased driver turnover rates.
Let’s say your driver picks up the wrong trailer at the yard and now they’re running behind. This event could set off a ripple effect of consequences. The driver loses time and wages and may be more likely to speed to their next destination. Events like these are costly from a fleet safety, productivity, and driver retention perspective. The right trailer tracking device helps solve these issues and:
1. Gets drivers back on the road faster
2. Saves your drivers from having to retrieve the trailer or repeat a route
3. Reduces yard accidents
3. Makes your drivers’ days easier and safer
LEARN MORE ABOUT GPS TRAILER TRACKERS
The Bottomline
You don’t need to manage mountains of paperwork to meet DOT regulations and FMCSA safety requirements. The right fleet management and telematics solution helps you eliminate paperwork, boost efficiency and profitability, and get the data you need for fleet safety. When every workflow is safer, easier, and more driver-friendly, you can spend less time on paperwork and focus on running your fleet.
LEARN MORE ABOUT TRANSFLO’S FLEET MANAGEMENT SOLUTION
Get the Full Fleet Safety Guide
To know more, get the official 2021 Fleet Safety Guide below, the most in-depth resource on driver safety that we’ve ever created.
GET THE FLEET SAFETY GUIDE