It is becoming increasingly clear that telematics will be the area most heavily impacted by the uptake of AI in the transport industry. The raw numbers now, drawing on feedback from fleets, confirms just this.
As many as 83 per cent of fleet operators believe that AI is going to have a significant impact on the safety of their drivers on the road, according to a survey from Teletrac Navman.
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Distracted driving incidents, such as using mobile devices behind the wheel are growing, and so is the concern from fleets.
49 per cent of respondents to said survey answered that distracted driving had a direct financial cost on their business. Technology, training, and developing a culture of safety are three tactics being employed by fleet operators to reduce the number of incidents.
32 per cent of respondents believe that AI will effectively be used to monitor driver behaviour in real time in order to help reduce distracted driving incidents, predicting and preventing potential accidents, improving vehicle maintenance, and enhancing training and coaching through data insights.
However, implementing AI is not without its concerns and challenges. Despite 66 per cents of teams being aware of the safety benefits of AI, 23 per cent of respondents said they were concerned about data privacy and 14 per cent fear resistance from drivers or staff.
47 per cent of respondents said that human interaction is crucial for effective decision making and 37 per cent said humans provide accountability and ethical oversight.
We spoke to Chris L’Ecluse, solutions specialist at Teletrac about the benefits of receiving this information direct from fleets, and how the industry can greater understand attitudes towards AI.
He says there will be a strong use case for AI in helping transport businesses manage their compliance through the safety benefits it can provide.
“Part of what we do is provide a link between the regulator and transport operators to help in meeting their compliance requirements,” Chris explains.
“The benefit in meeting compliance is that you realise a safer fleet of heavy vehicles. We know all too often that the number of transport operators who fall foul of road trauma is far too high.
“There’s the ability for our technology to be utilised by the transport operator to ensure as best as possible that their drivers reach their destination and return home safely, and also do so in a manner that the regulator recognises as being within the confines of the necessary regulations.”
Bridging the understanding of what AI can offer between those at the operational level of fleets and the drivers themselves will be an important step in changing how businesses approach implementing AI solutions.
Teletrac’s own solutions use AI alongside its video telematics solutions to map out a truck’s safe driving parameters, recording harsh acceleration, harsh deceleration and harsh cornering over speeding.
The cameras used for video telematics are then able to add the next layer, showing the driving conditions and allowing for a fuller picture of what can cause drivers to react to certain situations on the road.
“We are able to see that people are anticipating AI to be, not necessarily a silver bullet, but certainly an aid to their safety outcomes,” Chris says.
“But we do have to temper certain expectations. Any time you introduce a new technology, and we saw this with the introduction of telematics a few decades ago, there was a great deal of suspicion and anxiety around what it does.
“Some of the practices by the tech companies back then were such that It fed some of those suspicions, because drivers weren’t always necessarily consulted.
“A lot of what I’ve done over the past 15 years has been to consult with the drivers so that their voice is heard, that they understand what the technology is and that we respond transparently with respect to the drivers and the operators around what the technology is.
“With video telematics, for instance, you can imagine as a driver getting behind the wheel and they’ve got a camera lens pointed straight at them for the whole time that they’re driving.
“While for the operators, they do see AI as being a conduit to that safety outcome, we do have to work on ensuring that we not only consult with the drivers but respond respectfully and transparently to their concerns.”
Much of what Chris has been doing recently has been going out to fleets and workshops for driver education forums to speak about how AI will impact their work.
He says that so far there has been great feedback, looking beyond the executive level to have more intimate discussions with groups of drivers.
“We’ve got to respect the human element,” Chris says.
“We have been guilty in the tech industry of talking tech language which doesn’t always translate easily to the greater population. It’s the same for me with developers, when they start talking that binary talk, I get lost.
“The idea behind these education forums is that I address the drivers directly – not on a Teams call – I physically go to the distribution warehouses. I’ll have a group between 70 to 100 drivers, and I specifically ask that the executives don’t intervene.
“We want to allow the drivers an opportunity to air any concerns or grievances they may have. Once we’ve got that, I can respond to their specific concerns. Some of those conversations have been extremely robust, but that’s what we encourage.”
