Onboard cameras equipped with artificial intelligence can help drivers improve their performance and producers defend themselves against lawsuits.
Professional athletes watch film; lots of film. They look for patterns in what they did right and (most importantly) what they did wrong. When that knowledge is paired with dedication and hard work, it removes coincidence and paves a proven path to excellence.
Your drivers are professionals. They work hard every day and are dedicated to safety, the company, and our industry. They want to get better, too. Like athletes, they can improve their performance by watching film.
The upside of AI
Ready mixed concrete (RMC) truck cameras have come a long way from mere backup aids. Now vehicles can have cameras strung around them like Christmas lights, showing and potentially recording everything all the time. The paradox—the truth standing on its head—is the constant video feeds from these cameras can be overwhelming without intelligent filters.
Fleet safety software provider Netradyne has developed a complete system of cameras for RMC trucks, as have many others, but they have added artificial intelligence (AI) to the mix. The Netradyne Driver-i system captures and scores critical moments to help drivers become safer, aided by context before and after an event. Instead of a recording being triggered by an incident, all cameras constantly monitor for everything that can improve safety.
Think of a gray zone scorecard that monitors and reports the entire drive. The scorecard includes all the driver’s excellent driving and proactive moves in addition to the not-so-good things. The Driver-i One system provides drivers with awareness and self-confidence, allowing them to improve their driving behavior through film gamification. The headline benefits are reduced speeding and distracted driving, less time training, more focused coaching, and accident exoneration.
Reduced speeding/distracted driving
While speeding is truly a safety issue and Driver-i helps eliminate it, most traffic safety experts consider distracted driving just as severe or worse. The problem is adequately catching distractions to cultivate the ongoing training needed to eliminate the behavior. AI helps by scanning all cameras and creating film clips of typical actions associated with distractions.
Consider a vehicle rolling through a stop sign. This might be intentional (bad) or accidental (much worse). The system captures this behavior, but it also captures good behavior—in this case, all the complete and safe stops. It then provides a benchmark comparison against which the driver can improve.
Focused coaching
By concentrating on the context of actions that led up to an event and those that follow, driver coaching can be targeted to what matters most. This greatly reduces the time for film review and coaching so the driver can get back on the road faster.
Drivers can have a scorecard of the items monitored, which can be used both for internal and external motivation. Internally, they want to do better for themselves. Externally, they are competing with others to become the top or safest driver. RMC producers can sweeten the pot by offering financial incentives for improvement and maintaining better behavior.
Accident exoneration
Over-the-road transportation has a huge target on its back regarding litigation. A typical scenario is the plaintiff’s legal counsel portraying their client as helpless and innocent against the big, bad company when an alleged incident occurs. A favorite tool to drive up settlement amounts is to portray a lack of safe driver standards and education.
Establishing a comprehensive, targeted training and improvement program can be foundational in both preventing incidents and reducing the opportunity for additional settlement costs.
Proof point
Kyle Beckman, director of compliance and innovation at MMC Materials Inc., has an unwavering commitment to safety. The Madison, Miss.-based concrete supplier’s footprint is expansive, including more than 400 trucks servicing urban and rural markets in three states. Combining his two professional passions of safety and innovation, Beckman selected Netradyne’s AI-assisted platform to improve the company’s driver performance. Since onboarding the platform, MMC has seen a significant reduction in driver distraction, speeding violations, and traffic light violations.
“I can get a holistic view of my fleet,” says Beckman. “I can see what each area is doing and where we may be having issues, and I get accurate, valuable reports.”
A group statistics report breaks down numbers for each of his operational areas, an executive summary report shows driver behavior trends, and a driver statistics report serves as the framework for the fleet’s incentive program. The reports give Beckman visibility into where they might need additional coaching, where gaps in performance may lie, and where to focus certain efforts.
In terms of exoneration, Beckman says: “The video quality has helped us with insurance claims in that we’re able to immediately show what happened to law enforcement. When we’re involved in an accident, we can pull that video for the police or sheriff to view what occurred and avoid the need to proceed to the insurance stage.”
Yogi Berra was a legendary professional baseball catcher and manager who played 18 seasons for the New York Yankees. Two of his most famous sayings were “You can observe a lot by just watching” and “That’s too coincidental to be a coincidence.” Netradyne is helping RMC producers more clearly see driver behavior and connect improved performance to what was in the past considered “coincidence.”
Craig Yeack has held leadership positions with both construction materials producers and software providers. He is co-founder of BCMI Corp. (the Bulk Construction Materials Initiative), which is dedicated to reinventing the construction materials business with modern mobile and cloud-based tools. His Tech Talk column—named best column by the Construction Media Alliance in 2018—focuses on concise, actionable ideas to improve financial performance for ready-mix producers. He can be reached at [email protected].