Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/696225
Feature board of advisers. He believes that the "granularity and clarity that video monitoring" offers to fleets, accident investigators and drivers could yield great safety benefits. Private industry will outpace regu- lation by a long stretch, Osterberg says, and company drivers can expect multiple-camera systems to be com- mon before any potential mandate might take effect. He believes camera technologies will ultimately become a factory-installed truck option. These predictions could be accurate, given the strong customer growth both DriveCam and SmartDrive have expe- rienced. DriveCam this year received a cash infusion through the $500 million buyout of its parent company, Lytx, by private equity firm GTCR. Lytx spokeswoman Gretchen Griswold reports 2015 subscriptions were up 80 percent over 2014, with half a million drivers now in DriveCam-equipped vehicles. Fleets are drawn not just to the crash evidence value of video in court, but also to applications such as crash re- view, driver coaching and performance incentives. Drivers can generate massive amounts of video, mostly triggered by actions such as swerves or hard braking, for review by SmartDrive and DriveCam personnel. They cull notable events for the fleets, who often coach drivers around the issues raised. More ambitious use of video, pri- marily for real-time fatigue manage- ment, is on the horizon. That's "abso- lutely the direction of our technology," says DriveCam Senior Product Man- ager Todd Birzer. "We'll continue to evolve to pursue that aggressively." By reading lane striping, a system can trigger a driver alarm. Add a driver-facing camera, able to monitor length and frequency of blinks and nods and other movements, and the fatigue application is even greater. Research and development at Drive- Cam, illustrated in part by its recent ActiveVision product that combines its basic dual-camera service with lane- departure and collision warnings, is coalescing sensor and communica- tions technology around the so-called "missing link" inside the cab: the driver. The ActiveVision system is looking at technology that would capture events beyond those now gathered by the obvious triggers. It's using what Birzer calls "machine vision technology" to detect "lane markings and vehicles around 40 July 2016 BestDriverJOBS www.bestdriverjobs.com "The commercial driver is guilty until he proves himself innocent" in any on-highway incident." — Safety expert Don Osterberg on the sad reality for truckers in crash litigation and the accelerating trend toward adoption of forward-facing dash/ windshield cams by owner-operators