Spring 2006

How thoroughly do you monitor the way your drivers handle your vehicles? Up to now, unless you were actually sitting in the cab, your options were limited. Admittedly, it has been possible for years to analyse speed and over-revving; but not much else was usually practicable.

Now fleet management systems supplier cfc solutions has developed a system called cfc Safety Centre, which is said to allow the most detailed driver analysis yet. It combines analytical tools with telematics technology from Israeli specialist DriveDiagnostics.

Vehicles are fitted with GPS location technology linked to a sensor that measures vehicle movement. Alongside standard functions such as speed and position of the vehicle, the system also records behaviour such as late and hard braking and over-fast cornering.

These "incidents" are modelled against thousands of hours of ideal driving gathered in real-world conditions, so that a profile of individual behaviour can be produced automatically. There is also a real-time link back to base, so that managers can even check on driver performance while the vehicle is actually out on the road.

 

Back at base, the data is imported into the cfc Safety Centre software, which performs high-level analysis of driver behaviour, accident patterns and repair costs.

According to sales and marketing director Any Leech, the technology has already helped an emergency services operation to detect unnecessarily reckless night-time driving by its teams, and it has modified its call-out procedures as a result.