Reduce risky driving behavior with video telematics technology

Everyone knows they shouldn’t check their phones or take their eyes off the road while driving. Yet, despite this, preventable distracted driving incidents cause over 3,000 fatalities a year. Distracted driving is an important issue for every fleet. No matter how well-defined your policies, how frequent your driver training, or how enticing your safety performance rewards are, drivers are human and could likely experience the optimism bias effect. 

Optimism bias is the tendency to overestimate the chance that positive events will occur. When someone has an optimism bias, they may overlook — or even ignore — potential hazards, which can negatively impact management and decision-making outcomes.

Distracted driving is on the rise

Distracted driving is not just detrimental to the safety of people on the road. In 2019, distracted and impaired driving cost companies over $72.2 billion in medical care, liability, lost productivity and property damage.

The International Loss Control Institute (ILCI) estimates that insurance rates can increase 23-33% per year after a single accident. Crashes that involve property damage can cost businesses, on average, $24,500, whereas crashes involving personal injury or fatality can cost businesses between $150,000 and $7 million.

The only way to prevent this potential damage to your bottom line and manage risks within your fleet is to empower your drivers to improve their driving habits.

Easy enough to say, but how can it be done? While telematics solutions are a great starting point, fleet managers must consider deploying additional advanced technology to help their drivers make better decisions. 

Reduce risky driving behavior with advanced video technology 

Think about your approach to fleet safety — is your company proactive about preventing incidents from occurring, or are your policies reactionary to deal with the aftermath of a negative event? The best way to deal with incidents is to take measures to avoid having one at all. 

A proactive approach includes an important mix of driver education and advanced video telematics designed to prevent incidents from occurring. Integrating telematics and AI-driven video technology helps protect your drivers, others on the road and your business.

AI fleet camera benefits 

Innovative solutions, such as Surfsight cameras, offer technology like machine vision and artificial intelligence (MV+AI), combining video telematics with driving data to help reduce risky driving behavior.*

How AI-powered fleet cameras support safety and risk management:

• Reduce claims and insurance costs with live video evidence that protects your business — and your drivers — from liability.
• Access video clips any time to see what really happened on the road and in the vehicle.
• Share video footage simply and securely in the case of a claim.
• Identify drivers in risky situations using AI-powered triggers from in-cab cameras.
• Get real-time alerts related to harsh driving incidents and offer immediate driver assistance.

How AI-powered video telematics works

An AI-powered camera goes beyond standard video recording by monitoring and automatically detecting dangerous events while driving. Machine vision and artificial intelligence (MV+AI) identify sudden acceleration, sharp turns, harsh braking and distracted driving behavior to help fleets reduce avoidable vehicle incidents, and lower insurance claims and costs. Audio alerts and warnings allow drivers to self-correct before video capture is triggered, and video footage captures moments of risk to support coaching drivers.

Surfsight road-facing camera

Surfsight driver-facing camera

Vehicle camera systems powered by robust MV+AI technology proactively detect risky driving behaviors in real-time and send an audio alert to drivers. Making drivers aware of these actions as they happen empowers them to avoid incidents before they occur. Real-time alerts also help make them aware of their habits, making it easier for drivers to develop safer driving behaviors and improve their overall performance. 

MV+AI can also trigger video events, providing managers video proof of incidents to be used for driver training or driver exoneration in case of a false claim. Integrating this advanced technology into your telematics stack provides a wider range of insights into driving behavior, providing the data needed to help improve productivity, efficiency and safety.

Harness the power of Surfsight^TM video telematics with the Order Now program

Surfsight cameras are now available through the Order Now Program with the Geotab Marketplace. Order Now makes it easy to quickly add solutions to your cart in MyGeotab, creating a seamless purchasing experience.

Surfsight technology, powered by Lytx®, integrated with the new Geotab Camera Add-In is a comprehensive video telematics solution that helps optimize fleet efficiency, improve vehicle and driver safety, increase visibility and cut down on distracted driving behavior before it happens. 

Innovative features of Surfsight cameras and Geotab’s Camera Add-In

• Manage all of your cameras from MyGeotab for a centralized camera and vehicle management experience.
• Easily adjust camera sensitivity, define livestream and video quality settings, manage bulk importing of new cameras and GO devices, all from one location.
• Combine camera-focused events with telematics data to create custom rules specific to your company policies.
• Capture and download video for any event triggered by Geotab’s rules engine to use for purposes like coaching, exoneration and more.
• Select a specific point from a trip on the map to easily review and download video footage, giving you start-to-finish visibility into each trip.

Improve fleet safety with real-time insights

Unlike newer market entrants, Surfsight technology, powered by Lytx, draws from more than 20 years of industry leadership in the video safety space. With hundreds of thousands of vehicles providing new data every day, the technology is constantly learning, refining and improving its precision. Surfsight cameras help solve fleet challenges, such as:

• Reducing unsafe incidents with AI camera detection
• Improving operational visibility
• Powering insurance claims
• Increasing driver engagement
• Providing instant driver assistance and damage assessments
• Personalizing driver coaching based on data insights

Surfsight technology, combined with the power of telematics from Geotab, helps drivers feel confident that they have the support needed to continue to do their job safely and productively. 

To learn more about using Surfsight technology to reduce risky driving behavior, visit the Geotab Marketplace.

About Surfsight Technology

Powered by artificial intelligence and machine vision, the Surfsight AI-12 automatically helps detect and alert distracted driver behavior and harsh driving incidents in real-time, addressing the leading causes of preventable accidents. The Surfsight dash cam is available through the Geotab Order Now program in North America. Visit Surfsight on the Geotab Marketplace to discover more benefits.

*Lytx MV+AI technology is a driver aid only. Drivers should never wait for a warning before taking measures to avoid an accident. Lytx MV+AI distraction detection and alerting technology is designed to respect driver privacy because it does not collect, store or use any biometric identifiers or biometric information (i.e., scans of facial geometry) to detect distracted driving behaviors. See www.surfsight.com/driver-information.

See also: Two-step risky driving action plan for fleets