Getting more granular with driver behavior data

Driver behavior monitoring is essential for any organization that manages mobile resources—especially in fast-paced, high-risk sectors such as emergency medical services—because unsafe and inefficient driving habits cost employers billions every year. Without technology to monitor and coach individual drivers, organizations have no visibility into behavioral patterns that could help them predict and prevent a catastrophic event such as a major accident or on-the-job injury. The inability to measure and improve driver performance also leads to costs such as tickets, accidents, increased insurance premiums, and accelerated deterioration of vehicles due to poor driving. This article explains why the ability to capture specific driver behavior data about individual drivers is critical to improving safety and mitigating the costs of aggressive and wasteful driving.

InSight Mobile Data Director of Product Development Chris Eller discusses the importance of capturing actionable driver behavior data.

You Need Real-Time Insight and Actionable Data

A lack of actionable, real-time data is a key barrier preventing employers from identifying warning signs and using coaching or disciplinary action to address unsafe driving. Today, organizations are typically relying on after-the-fact reporting—which means they may not even know about a risky driver until after there’s been a complaint, injury, or lawsuit. Ideally, a driver behavior monitoring solution would provide real-time alerts to both drivers and their supervisors. Real-time insight is critical, but so is granular detail. Managers need actionable information that they can use to evaluate and coach at-risk drivers. Even with a fleet tracking solution in place, an organization may not always be able to identify specific drivers. This impedes effective coaching or discipline. Furthermore, if a supervisor is only receiving alerts for severe safety violations, they will miss any early warning signs that a driver is at increased risk of causing an accident.

To address unsafe driving before it causes a more serious problem, you need to drill down into the details of individual driver behavior—and use that information to improve your team’s performance. The ability to identify the driver, and not just the vehicle in use, is therefore an important requirement for any driver behavior monitoring solution.

The Importance of Real-Time Vehicle Alerts for In-Vehicle Coaching

Acceleration, braking, and cornering are three of the most common events that create safety issues. The StreetEagle platform from InSight Mobile Data tracks these actions against multiple thresholds to capture a detailed picture of driver behavior—and provides immediate feedback when a threshold is violated. If a driver is traveling too fast, braking too hard, or taking a turn too quickly, they will receive an audible alert indicating the severity of the event, while their manager also receives instant notification. Immediate feedback helps drivers be aware of their performance on the road and correct their unsafe habits in real time—helping to avoid an accident or complaint.

Scorecards, Dashboards and Benchmarking

StreetEagle also gives managers detailed information about individual and fleet-wide behavior patterns that can be used to compare and evaluate drivers, identify trends, guide training or coaching efforts, and apply discipline or incentives appropriately. The system generates driver and fleet-level scorecards with built-in benchmarking so you can see how individual drivers are helping (or hurting) your overall safety performance. Easy-to-use dashboards reveal at a glance who the outliers are, and how they are improving or falling over time. The scoring mechanism is based on a simple 1-100 scale, with organizations able to customize the weight given to each metric, including: speeding over the posted limit or company-defined thresholds, vehicle idling, acceleration, braking, and cornering. This flexibility empowers organizations to define and enforce their own safety polices and take the most effective action to avoid accidents, injuries, and other costs of unsafe driving. Fleet driver safety is critical to your company’s bottom line and reputation. It’s time to take action to monitor driver behavior and address risky habits. Click here to learn more about StreetEagle’s driver behavior monitoring capabilities.