The 2016 rush to add video to telematics programs netted the positive outcome of raising awareness about video in commercial transportation. The result is more fleets are enjoying the benefit of exonerating their drivers when faced with a false claim. But Lytx Chairman and CEO Brandon Nixon knows that exoneration is just the tip of the iceberg of what a truly integrated video telematics program can do to transform fleet operations.
Lytx created the category of video telematics in 1998, and now protects more than 650,000 drivers and has sold more than 400,000 subscriptions to its flagship DriveCam video safety program. As the industry pioneer, Lytx has continually paved new ground, both in technology and in business applications, to make video work harder for fleets.
Translating Video into Fleet and Business Insights
"Video's clarity and certainty has huge potential to inject a tremendous amount of knowledge into fleet operations," Nixon said. "But to realize video's true benefits, you can't just add a video camera to telematics."
The difference, he said, is all about the data.
"Telematics programs, of course, deliver big mounds of data," Nixon said. "Translating that data into knowledge, and knowledge into insights can be a daunting, if not impossible, task for most fleets, and even then, telematics data alone provides only a partial picture of what's happening in their fleet.
"While you might, for example, be able to extract trends around collisions at certain times of day or days of the week, or even at certain geographic locations, telematics data won't tell you why these events occur, and fleet operations are left to infer what might be happening," Nixon said.
Fleets are now adding video to their telematics program to get to the root cause of events, but, according to Nixon, unless there's an integration between video and telematics data, this move creates new burdens on fleets that don't have the manpower or expertise to sift through often thousands of hours of video to identify the few video clips that can inform the right actions to take.
Defining Video Telematics – Not Just Adding a Camera
"True video telematics is a powerful combination of a variety of elements that delivers precise, predictive, and prescriptive insights that a fleet manager, coach or driver can use to take immediate action," said Nixon.
He said Lytx defines video telematics as the integration of the following:
- Telematics
- Video camera (in DriveCam's case, with inward- and outward-facing lenses)
- Additional sensors (e.g., accelerometer or GPS)
- Machine vision
- Engine control module connectivity
- Human review and analysis of video
- Comprehensive driving behavior database
- Predictive and prescriptive analytics
- Actionable insights
The Network Effect in Action: The Benefit of Each Mile Driven
"Our rapid growth shows that fleets want more impactful insights that draw a straight line from the driving event through to improved safety and operations," he said. Lytx has upwards of 70 billion miles of driving data powering its insights, and is adding another 1 billion miles every two weeks. All that data translates into more precise and reliable insights.
"Each mile driven by a vehicle protected with DriveCam adds value to the more than 350,000 other vehicles currently on the road with DriveCam by making the data pool richer and the analytics algorithm smarter," said Nixon. "It's a network effect that means being part of a larger group – in our case, five times larger than the next closest group – delivers enormous benefit."
A full-service approach to video may be too overwhelming for some fleets, but some use of video, Nixon said, may be better than nothing, because it allows a fleet to become familiar with the benefits of having a silent witness, and gives fleets a first step into understanding how video might fit into their fleet management workflow.
Common and Persistent Problems Solved by True Video Telematics
In an October 2016 survey of Lytx newsletter subscribers, respondents across all commercial transportation segments cited distracted and drowsy driving and safety policy enforcement as top on their list of what keeps them up at night. Both of these challenges can be addressed with true video telematics by revealing what's happening behind the wheel at the time of a driving event.
While those challenges are related to driver behavior, fleets are also concerned about productivity and cargo and passenger security, and video technology now exists, he said, that gives fleets more visibility than ever before into what's happening with their vehicles on and off the road.
"We're in trials with our Unisyn platform, and it's revealing a host of creative solutions to really tough fleet problems," said Nixon. Unisyn is a real-time, cloud-connected video telematics platform that gives fleets unprecedented access to live and recorded continuous video in a system that can be configured to give users immediate access to precisely the video clip they need.
"We anticipated that Unisyn video would address problems like routing inefficiencies or freight theft, but our clients are showing us how Unisyn video is also solving very specific problems, like uncovering issues with freight handling, and evidence in workers' comp claims," said Nixon.
This new era of video telematics shows its power as a tool to enhance overall fleet operations, and the resulting business insights may be used to further transform the way a company operates.
"Data is driving nearly every major business decision being made today, and video is incredibly data-rich," said Nixon. "It's an untapped source that organizations can use to make the best decisions for their business now, and to better shape their futures."
