Everyone knows that 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.

Your drivers are no different. No matter how well-defined your policies are, how frequently you have driver training, or how enticing your safety performance rewards are, drivers are human and optimism bias comes into play.

Distracted driving is on the rise

Distracted driving is not just detrimental to the safety of people on the road — it also costs companies about $60 billion a year in vehicle repair, loss of productivity, litigation fees, settlements, rising insurance costs, damage to customer relationships and reputation.

The only way to prevent this potentially catastrophic 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 like the GO9 device are a great starting point, fleet managers must consider deploying additional advanced technology to help your drivers make better decisions.

Using advanced technology to mitigate distracted driving

Think about your approach to fleet safety — is your company proactive about avoiding 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 combined with advanced video telematics designed to prevent incidents from occurring.

Today’s innovative solutions, as the Surfsight dashcam, offer technology like machine vision and artificial intelligence (MV+AI), combining video telematics with driving data to help solve industry problems such as distracted driving.

Dashcams powered by robust MV+AI technology proactively detect distracted or unsafe 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 cutting-edge technology into your telematics stack provides a wider range of insights into driving behavior, giving fleets the data they need to help improve productivity, efficiency and safety.

Learn more about the capabilities of this powerful MV+AI technology by contacting our team at Info@advtracking.net