Tracking The World’s Worst Drivers – Are You One Of Them?

In the United States, a recent patent has put forward plans to revolutionise vehicle tracking by monitoring not only the vehicles in a fleet but the drivers behind the wheel as well.

The proposed idea includes a central data store that holds records for any movements or incidents that occur while on the road for the fleet as a whole. But this information would no longer be retained and analysed in isolation.

Instead, it’s easier than ever for drivers to be pitted against one another.

In fact, drivers within a fleet of vehicles for a company can now be compared and sized up according to a range of different metrics to see how their statistics line up with their peers.

The data store’s driver analysis can compare employees within the same geographic area and the same company, with information based on satellite feeds and video recordings.

What’s more, you will even be able to create a comparison of drivers in different fleets, so with access to enough data, you can map which fleets are performing better than others. And by extension which drivers are “worse” according to your chosen metrics.

This becomes unsettlingly easy for individuals to be singled out based on a data set that only offers up limited information and is subject to various external factors that our out of their control.

While the “evidence” offered up will be in both video and static image form, this can often be limited.

The patent’s goals are no doubt to improve road safety by ensuring full accountability for an individual driver’s actions within a fleet. But by enabling comparisons within that same fleet, or even amongst others, there will naturally be a degree of competition.

And this is never good for anyone on the roads.

We’ll have to monitor this patent closely to see if it comes to pass or has any significant impact on the world of vehicle tracking, but there’s no doubt about it that technology is becoming far cleverer.

Fleet tracking is no longer just about the fleet; it’s about those individuals within it – and how they can do better.