Fleet Management News & Business Info | Commercial Carrier Journal
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/759228
commercial carrier journal | december 2016 53 Debra Morris, executive vice president and chief financial officer. As part of the project, Apria configured its Telogis system to alert fleet managers if drivers exceed 75 mph. "We felt that we did not want to go too low because of the volume of alerts," says Giancarlo Gavino, national fleet and transportation safety manager. Even with a high speed threshold, the number of excessive speeding alerts was "quite a bit" at first, Gavino says. Since installing the system, Apria has seen a 90 percent reduc- tion in excessive speeds, Morris says. In addition to speed alerts, Apria uses Telogis Coach, a self-policing app that gives drivers real-time notifications and a daily performance score derived from four cate- gories: speeding, harsh deceleration, accelera- tion and idle time. e app gives drivers a distinct audible alert if they exceed any threshold and provides them with an opportunity to modify their behaviors before an excessive alert is reported to fleet management. For speeding, drivers are alerted if they exceed 70 mph. "We are letting [drivers] self-police themselves by looking at the scores," Gavino says. "We want the tool to pay dividends on its own without us putting more effort into it. For the most part, it has been working well without too much involvement." Connected throttle control By FMCSA's own estimates, its proposed speed limiter rule will cost the trucking industry billions of dollars. However, the agen- cy predicts the increased fuel efficiency will create net savings for fleets, with additional savings from accident reduction. One item FMCSA glossed over in the rule is the cost to devel- op tamperproof speed limiters. e truck's top speed already can be programmed into its ECM, but making devices tamperproof will require a one-time cost of between $150 million and $200 million industrywide, according to the Truck and Engine Manu- facturers Association. Making ECMs tamperproof may not be considered an up- grade for fleets. Newer and more advanced technologies, such as those found in many telematics systems, might provide more preferable options for improving speed man- agement. SpeedGauge and Magtec offer one exam- ple of what is now pos- sible with "connected" speed limiter technolo- gy. SpeedGauge provides business intelligence and location-based analytics, while Magtec specializes in telematics and vehicle security systems. In September, the companies announced a collaborative product called SafeSpeed that can adjust a vehicle's top speed settings by location while in motion. SafeSpeed works through an integration of SpeedGauge's database of road speed limits and Magtec's connected vehicle security system. Magtec's system can disable a parked vehicle until drivers enter an authentication code. Fleets also can use its system to safely bring a moving vehicle to a stop, if necessary, by initiating a remote shutdown sequence that incrementally cuts the throttle. "The focus is to provide data in a more holistic way than speed." – Sid Nair, senior director of marketing and product management, Teletrac The SafeSpeed application delivers location-specific speed limit data from SpeedGauge to the Magtec system, which then adjusts the throttle signal to the ECM to limit the vehicle's top speed.