Smart dashcams have growing role to play in fleet management

A new generation of dashcams has the potential to improve safety and reduce costs – excellent news for fleet owners in tough times.

By Jason Mellow, Head of Business Insurance at Miway

According to the Road Traffic Management Corporation (RMTC), logistics-type vehicles are disproportionately involved in fatal crashes – light-load vehicles are 1.8% overrepresented in terms of their relation to the total number of vehicles on the road. The figures for heavy passenger vehicles (6.9%) and heavy-load vehicles (5.4%) are equally perturbing.1 Statistics from 2019 show that road accidents cost the national economy an estimated R170.6 billion.2

There’s clearly a need to improve safety. But from the fleet owner’s point of view, improved safety is just one challenge – another is the need to manage the total cost of fleet ownership rigorously. The latter challenge is particularly pressing as fuel and other running costs escalate along with a shortage of suitable human resources and a highly competitive environment.

In short, lowering costs while improving reliability and turnaround times are critical success factors in today’s economy, especially in South Africa given its reliance on road freight.

If this all looks like a tall order, it is. Luckily, the emergence of a new generation of smart dashcams is set to play a leading role in helping fleet managers improve various key performance indicators.

Like much of today’s smart technology, today’s and tomorrow’s dashcams offer innovative functionalities like facial recognition but the real secret sauce is the ability to manipulate the data they send back to the control centre, increasingly using artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities accessed cost-effectively via the cloud. This intelligence can be used for a variety of purposes, as indicated below:

Automatically recorded footage can provide managers with information about driving behaviour and adherence to company protocols. This could prompt training as needed, but also alerts in real time if, for example, driver drowsiness or other immediately risky behaviour (such as cell phone use or seatbelts not being used) is detected. This is particularly relevant given that human error is implicated in 85% of all fatal road accidents, with 36% of these fatal accidents involving light delivery vehicles, minibuses, trucks, vans or buses.3 Some fleet owners report that using dashcams has helped them reduce accident rates by as much as 50%.

Constantly monitoring driving – and suggesting improvements – can help reduce fuel consumption and vehicle wear and tear.

Dashcam data can help managers identify bottlenecks and other inefficiencies that could potentially be remedied to improve the vehicle’s productivity, especially when it comes to loading and unloading, as well as routing and scheduling.

In the event of an accident or other incident occurring that might involve the policy or an insurance claim, dashcam data can be used to provide accurate information rapidly, thus speeding up the whole process and potentially leading to better outcomes for the company and driver.

Risk mitigation via well-crafted fleet insurance is obviously a key strategy for fleet owners, but it does represent a significant overhead. The use of dashcams can help convince your insurance company that your fleet represents a lower risk because the chance of accidents and damage to/ theft of cargo is reduced.

There’s no doubt that fleet managers are under constant pressure to improve performance on all levels. Smart technology like dashcams, used effectively, offer them a range of opportunities to achieve their goals.

Miway is a licensed non-life insurer and Financial Services Provider (FSP 33970).

1Road Traffic Management Corporation, “South African fatal crashes in context. December 2021”, available at https://www.rtmc.co.za/images/rtmc/docs/research_dev_rep/South-African-Fatal-Crashes-in-Context---Dec2021---Fin.pdf.

2International Transport Forum, “Road safety annual report 2019: South Africa”, available at https://www.itf-oecd.org/sites/default/files/south-africa-road-safety.pdf.

3How artificial intelligence dashcams can reduce fleet costs”, Truck and Freight (14 September 2021), available at https://truckandfreight.co.za/how-artificial-intelligence-dashcams-can-reduce-fleet-costs/.