In EMS operations, drivers’ behavior has a significant impact on the safety of patients, passengers, and crew members—as well as their company’s operating costs, potential liabilities, and overall performance.
Driver behavior monitoring and feedback in real time can help to mitigate expenses and make safety a priority during every 911 or non-emergency trip. In this article, we’ll examine how StreetEagle’s in-vehicle hardware collects granular information about a driver’s behavior as it’s happening—and what supervisors can do with this data to establish a culture of safety and high performance.
Capture Granular Behavioral Data for Individual Drivers
The standard hardware in ambulances and other medical vehicles is an automatic vehicle location (AVL) black-box with WI-FI capabilities to provide location data. This helps EMS companies keep track of their vehicles, but an integrated driver behavior monitoring platform can do much more in terms of ensuring the safety of crews and passengers.
For maximum efficacy, driver monitoring tools allow management to track individual drivers—not just vehicles. With the StreetEagle platform, drivers log in to their vehicles using a unique key fob, making driver identification easy and efficient. EMS supervisors can then set up a customized dashboard and monitor KPIs for driver behavior in real time. In addition to location, StreetEagle’s EMS fleet management technology tracks speed, heading, acceleration, hard braking and cornering.
The platform can connect to the OBDII port for engine status, as well as to the lights and sirens—so supervisors and back-office operators know whether a vehicle is en route to an emergency site or transporting a patient to a medical facility. This information is critical because it can explain any erratic movements or speeding above the posted limit, which may be unavoidable in an emergency.
Connecting these different components gives you a complete picture of performance—both historically and in real time. The ability to monitor this type of data with granular detail provides management with a clear understanding of behavior patterns and risks for individual drivers and fleet-wide.
Actively Address Risky Behavior With Real-Time Vehicle Alerts and Driver Feedback
When drivers engage in risky behavior, supervisors receive real-time vehicle alerts via text message or e-mail. At the same time, StreetEagle also provides in-vehicle alerts if a driver violates braking, turning, or speeding policies. This ensures the driver is aware of the infraction as it’s happening, making it less likely for the driver to repeat that behavior in the future.
Any sort of driver behavior data—specifically violations or unsafe habits—can be relayed to the individual’s supervisor via an alert or on-screen notification. This improves visibility into field operations so that EMS companies can better understand and manage their risks and liabilities.
Monitor Long-Term Trends and Conduct Targeted Training or Coaching
Using StreetEagle to analyze individual and fleet-wide trends, upper management can meet with drivers about specific behavioral problems. For example, a supervisor can see if there was a consistent issue with a driver’s cornering or braking during the previous quarter, and address that subject directly with the driver, using the data to explain the problem and develop a solution.
EMS companies can conduct specialized training for drivers based on the specific challenges they are facing, and the trends in driver behavior data enable managers to accurately assess whether and how individual drivers are improving their performance. Over time, this helps the company develop a complete fleet safety program.
The Bottom Line: StreetEagle Supports Improved Performance and Reduced Risk
Establishing a culture of safety throughout an EMS operation begins in the field but extends through all parts of the organization. By collecting and tracking granular driver data with StreetEagle, you can train employees more effectively, reduce the likelihood of accidents, and support sustained performance improvement.
StreetEagle is truly an all-in-one solution. Everything collected on board medical vehicles is instantaneously transmitted to other systems on the back end. For example, StreetEagle can feed crew location and status information into a computer-aided dispatch system to enable dispatchers to pinpoint the vehicle best suited to respond to a new call. Integration with billing software helps ensure total accuracy in billable miles attributed to each trip. And that’s not all. StreetEagle provides fleet maintenance management, mobile forms capabilities, and much more.
To find out how StreetEagle can help your company improve safety and performance, contact InSight Mobile Data today.
