GPS Fleet Monitoring Helps Improve Driver Safety And Reduce Costs

Two of the top concerns of fleet managers are improving driver safety and reducing costs. Fleet monitoring tools, which provide metrics from GPS vehicle tracker units, can be used to achieve both.

Navman Wireless recently introduced a Driver Scorecard to its OnlineAVL2 fleet tracking system. This enables fleet operators to identify drivers who compromise safety and lower fuel efficiency through poor driving behaviour. Driver Scorecard pulls together metrics gathered from Navman Wireless GPS vehicle tracker units and integrated hardware installed in each vehicle to display behaviour such as speeding, excessive idling, harsh braking, high engine RPMs and other poor driving habits that they define.

By benchmarking driver behaviour across the entire fleet Driver Scorecard helps them achieve a major safety and cost reduction benefit. The scorecard works on a daily 100 point scoring system with metrics in two categories: event count and duration. To allow fair comparison between drivers, the scores are normalised against a standard distance and duration, a unique feature of the Navman Wireless software. Each point a driver loses is then deducted from the daily 100 point allocation and averaged across total distance driven to produce that driver's scorecard for each day.

Reports and scorecards:

• Identify drivers' areas for improvement, show the impact of their behaviour on fuel consumption and permit drilldown to trip details when needed
• Collate personal scores as well as comparison of each driver against fleet averages – these can be shared with the driver and used to improve behaviours with training specific to at risk areas
• Allow monitoring of "at risk" drivers with intervention for urgent areas of concern such as speeding, harsh vehicle usage and excessive idling

Reports can be viewed by both driver groups and vehicle types, allowing fleet managers' spot opportunities to reduce costs and optimise operations.

Driver groups may be compared by region, business unit, service type or any other category of their choice, then a scorecard report or driver-based dashboard KPI is generated. This enables managers to easily compare performance by driver group and use the information to improve driver behaviour by offering group based driving incentives.

Comparison by vehicle type allows fleet managers to view fleet performance data to aid in analysis of usage and cost and then make changes to reduce expenditure.

Driver Scorecard is a significant step forward in fleet monitoring, allowing fleet managers to quickly pinpoint fleet-wide issues, while also giving them the ability to drill down to individual drivers – to focus on safety and keep costs down.