There’s no getting around the fact that there have been supply chain stresses in recent months. And that these have put pressure on the transport industry and in particular, drivers.
Transporting goods interstate has been frustrating due to states having different restrictions at the same time.
As a result, a deadline that would be achievable previously has become difficult to meet.
Yet despite the difficulties, drivers and operators still have a job to do.
Transport operators need to keep running as we learn to live alongside COVID.
But they can’t do it at the cost of sacrificing driver safety or fatigue management.
So, what to do? Well, advances in in-vehicle technology are here to help you.
Here are two solutions to help you make deadlines, manage fatigue, and keep your drivers safe.
Electronic Work Diaries
With targets to meet and the pressure to perform, it can sometimes be tempting to push yourself too far.
And especially dangerous when you push drivers to perform beyond what they already are.
But when you’re in charge of a fleet of vehicles, making sure drivers are well-rested and not exceeding their work hours is important for safety.
NHVR-approved Electronic Work Diaries (EWDs) help drivers stay compliant by taking the guesswork out of calculating work and rest periods.
By removing the risk of lost or damaged written diaries, an EWD encourages safe practices and safer roadways, and helps you stay compliant.
Record keeping is easier, and with the solution taking care of calculating available hours, drivers can focus on the road instead of worrying about working out when they need to rest or exceeding their driving hours.
The benefits extend to the back-office team.
They know that drivers are taking adequate rest breaks and staying compliant.
With access to real-time and historical fatigue data for each driver through fleet management software, it improves on their ability to schedule drivers and allocate work to the drivers with available time.
With a real-time view into driver fatigue, the right people in the business can be notified before a driver violates rest break times.
From here the business can focus on strategic initiatives and preventative coaching instead of reacting to violations after they have occurred.
Smart Dashcams
With the pressure to deliver, bad habits can start to creep in, even for the most diligent of drivers.
After all, we’re only human.
With the average age of transport drivers still in the mid-forties, entrenched habits on the road can be more commonplace than you realise.
That’s why AI-powered smart dashcams are an important part of driver safety.
The dashcams capture all driving time and analyse footage in real-time.
With the advanced sensors and embedded AI capabilities, they can identify road, environment, and in-cabin events as they happen.
The system can notify both the back-office, but also provide auditory feedback direct to the driver to ensure they can then adjust their behaviour instantly, to create a safer environment for all on the road.
These can include close driving, distracted driving, drowsiness, seatbelt, and so on.
Smart Dashcams capture and analyse 100 per cent of drive time.
This footage always gives the business an holistic picture of driver safety and behaviour, and not just when an incident or collision occurs.
This gives transport organisations what they need to promote and embed a safety culture within the business.
But what do you do with all this? With built-in features around virtual coaching and managed training like scorecards, the footage, analytics, and driver scores, you can uncover learning opportunities for each individual driver and use this to help create a personalised coaching experience.
Beyond this, you can also develop rewards structures for good driving as the alerting system picks up on positive road actions, to cement better on-road behaviour.
Staying safe and compliant
For many transport operators, the current situation means the temptation to bend rules to meet deadlines can be strong.
But this cannot be the new normal.
It’s more important than ever to make sure you’re staying compliant.
And solutions like EWDs and Smart Dashcams are here to help.
They can assist you in managing the business and driver’s fatigue and safety requirements, while helping you to get to your customers on time, safely.
It’s important that everyone – from the CEO on down to the drivers in the cabin – do their utmost to make sure that at the end of the day, everyone goes home.
The adoption of technology is a key component of making this a reality.