It was fantastic to be with people face to face, no Zoom or Teams and especially at the Brisbane Truck Show 2021.
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DriveRisk’s focus, ‘Alert & Engaged’ revolves around our latest technologies supporting the Driver Safety Program, the DriveCam Event Recorder – the SF300 with MV + AI. However, the highlight was the brand-new generation of our fatigue and distraction solution the DriveAlert+. The result of 3+ years of development and testing – leading edge driver fatigue technology combining PERCLOS, 3D mapping and AI achieving high accuracy of fatigue and distraction detection, plus the ability to detect mobile phone usage.
To demonstrate this, we set up an in cab driver experience with an active fatigue management system. A DriveAlert+ with seat vibration unit coupled to a screen to show the “computer thinking” in real time. The live demo received fantastic insights and feedback, as well as genuine excitement amongst people who took the time to experience DriveAlert+ which included those with previous experience of fatigue and distraction technology as well as complete newbies.
Driver Feedback:
- Some fatigue systems have no context to the on-road situation resulting in too many false alarms and unnecessary seat shaking:
- When you are driving into the sun and squinting
- Looking through the turn at a mid-range speed
- Checking ahead to your exit on a roundabout
- Looking at your dash for critical gauge information
- Checking your side mirrors to ensure you have proper spatial awareness
- Looking in your mirrors whilst reversing in the yard or site
- Drivers more edgy due to over triggering (false positives) and then:
- Drivers being told to get off the road, when there is not a fatigue issue present (result of false positives).
- Over-triggering, particularly seat vibration, results in anxiety which brought on fatigue due to not being relaxed whilst performing the driving task.
Lack of training on the technology – Drivers don’t understand the in-cab experience
Too distracting at night due to IR/LEDs
- IR reducing their range of vision, like a dashboard display that is too bright
The ‘Office Chair’ view was likewise informative, the things they want to see from a safety partner:
- Ongoing Customer service and support
- They want solutions not “Retail” sales processes that has under delivered
- Limited reporting. Data insight is critical to effective management of the systems, without data you can’t measure, if you can’t measure you can’t manage, if can’t manage you can’t mitigate
- Contractual obligation focusses only
The overall feedback was both worrying and encouraging.
Worrying, in that operators who are genuinely trying to ensure the safety of their drivers by deploying this technology are being let down significantly by poor product and customer service.
Encouraging, because having provided driver behavioral solutions for more than 20 years, we have learnt to adopt a partnership approach with our clients. We attend every single depot every single month, fine tune the settings, ensure risk is reducing and provide updates on our Risk and collision reduction KPI (key performance indicators) which is set at initial deployment and reviewed quarterly.
DriveRisk provides people led coaching and support, leading edge technologies and best in class service and training. We are in great shape to help commercial operators across a diverse portfolio of on road activities to get their drivers home safely every day with solutions customised to meet your requirements and make your business safer. The road ahead is a great one, we hope to see you out there in the year ahead.
Stay Alert, Stay Engaged, and Stay Safe on Our Roads with DriveCam and DriveAlert+
