The wide-ranging benefits provided by modern GPS tracking systems are well accepted and understood today by fleet supervisors and business owners alike. By equipping a fleet with GPS tracking devices, fleets witness measurable reductions in speeding, accidents, maintenance, and fuel consumption, not to mention improvements in both operating efficiency and customer service. However, due to more recent improvements in the ability to measure driver behavior, a whole new set of benefits are emerging, with significant results that are changing the entire commercial fleet management landscape.
Commencing in the consumer markets, the insurance industry has begun to leverage the safety improvements realized by commercial fleet tracking technology to reduce risk outcomes through behavior-based auto insurance rates. By equipping a consumer vehicle with a capable GPS device, insurers can monitor the distance, times and regions traveled to create usage-based pricing, while monitoring a wide range of other factors that assess driving behavior as a means towards risk/reward influenced pricing. The concept is not new, as insurance companies have always used risk outcomes to determine pricing, but technology has accelerated and simplified their ability to do so. The acronyms PHYD (Pay How You Drive) and PAYD (Pay As You Drive) are becoming commonplace as insurers such as Progressive use Telematics to reward good driving behavior.
By adopting a policy of monitor, measure, educate and reward, fleets can positively influence driving behavior, with substantial positive outcomes. GPS Commander provides its customers a platform from which to achieve this, giving each fleet the ability to configure the specific behavior’s being monitored and the weighting of each. Factors can include driver speeding, engine idling, after hours vehicle usage, hard braking, hard acceleration and others. In addition to being able to receive live on-screen, email and SMS alerts of behavioral exceptions, GPS Commander’s live dashboard displays graphical representations of each driver, making it easy for fleet managers to compare results. Automated reports with graphical overlays are sent to fleet supervisors or managers at pre-set intervals, putting key metrics at their fingertips that can be used to coach and reward improvements in driving behavior.
At some point in the not-to-distant future, it’s feasible, if not likely, to see these types of policies implemented by commercial insurers as a means of differentiating and rewarding safe drivers. With GPS Commander, fleets can leverage this technology immediately and reap the results of reduced operational costs that result from even greater realized savings in fuel consumption, vehicle wear, insurance costs and so forth…
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