What next for sat nav? The Fleet Voice
Wednesday 13 October 2010. The Fleet Voice Column.
Any driver who uses a satellite navigation system will have a story or two to tell about the little genie’s occasional bouts of amnesia or poor sense of direction. Fortunately, few end up with an articulated truck ending up blocking a lane in rural Mudfordshire or directing the car off Beachy Head.
Even allowing for the odd hissy fit, sat nav is a brilliant tool for any fleet driver, doing away with the profusion of maps and dangerous glances while driving. Plug in your destination and a simple screen and clear voice guide you in with amazing precision.
With so much computing power crammed into such a small package, though, are we making the most of sat navs? Is there more to come and what else can a sat nav do to help business users?
Well, among others, TomTom Business Solutions reckons it has some, if not all, of the answers to a company driver’s sat nav needs. TomTom’s ecoPLUS is not directly aimed at the driver but at fleet managers as it provides pinpoint accurate data about the car’s carbon dioxide output and fuel efficiency. In these times of ever-increasing fuel costs and the need to drive down environmental emissions just to keep business heads above commercial waters, this is potentially a very useful tool for fleet managers.
Thomas Schmidt, Managing Director of TomTom Business Solutions, said: ‘For any fleet manager, the twin aims of cutting fuel costs and reducing their carbon foot print are right at the top of the agenda. With ecoPLUS, here is an easy solution that works out of the box on a wide variety of vehicles that exist in today’s company fleets.’
The plug-in simplicity of the ecoPLUS makes it more attractive than some other rival systems, especially as it can be swapped more readily between vehicles. This saves the time and expense of buying more of the same or paying for expensive installation.
TomTom also says the ecoPLUS will record what gear a car is in, the engine speed and when the car is idling. All of this information is sent by Bluetooth from the ecoPLUS to the car’s sat nav and then beamed back to the fleet manager’s computer via TomTom’s Webfleet.
The upside to this is a fleet manager can make his or her company vehicles work at their most efficient. It also helps to identify the habits of the vehicle’s driver, which in turn will allow the fleet manager to see if a particular driver could do with some training to get the best from the vehicle and themselves.
It’s at this point that many company drivers will throw their hands up and shout ‘Big Brother is watching me.’ To an extent, this is a justified claim, but when so many of us now have to account for our every move, litre of fuel consumed and each minute of the day, is it such a bad thing for this hassle to be removed and placed in the hands of a computer? Could devices such as the ecoPLUS not save us time?
There was just such an outcry when Trafficmaster did a deal with the Department for Transport in 2007. Using Trafficmaster’s Smartnav system, a ‘spy in the sky’ was able to follow 50,000 vehicles and record their location, speed and route.
It wasn’t a perfect system by any means, recording data only every 15 minutes, and all of the data was then made anonymous to avoid personal details of individual drivers being identified. Still, there were cries that this was a rouse to nab speeding drivers, root out anyone taking an extra minute’s tea break or even find those who the taxman would like a word with.
The Department for Transport rebutted these suggestions and said the deal with Trafficmaster was simply to help identify where congestion problems developed and why.
Fair enough. But with TomTom’s ecoPLUS system and other similar products, the game has moved on considerably since 2007. The computing is far more sophisticated and able, so should we more concerned now about Big Brother peering over our shoulder?
Not according to insurance company Norwich Union, which began a trial of a sat nav tracking system for young drivers in 2004. By following a driver’s individual habits, Norwich Union was able to cut some driver’s insurance premiums by 30% as it showed how, where and when a car was driven.
Norwich Union’s take on these systems is that it helps tailor the insurance to the individual rather than making generalisations about all younger drivers.
The other big benefit of such sat nav systems that communicate information away from the car as well as taking receiving information to give route guidance is it can help find the car if it’s stolen. With more and more car thieves stealing the keys for easy entry and getaway, tracing a stolen car is more difficult for the police and insurers. Anything that helps recover the car or, better still, deter the thief in the first instance has to be a good thing. This is where having a Big Brother to help fight off the playground bullies is a good thing.
One other big benefit of a system like ecoPLUS is in the event of an accident. How many times have company drivers been the innocent victims of another driver’s poor vehicle control, yet because of the hassle of insurance claims and processes, fleet managers are forced into accepting a knock-for-knock settlement? With millimetre accurate data, a fleet manager could use a sat nav to prove the speed, position and direction of their driver’s vehicle at the time of an accident. No more wrangling about who pulled out of a junction or ‘he appeared from nowhere and was going like a bat out of hell.’
Naturally, not all of this will allay the fears of every company driver, and there are those who will have good reason not to want their movements recorded. Yet, with ever greater accountability required of all business drivers, a more intelligent sat nav must surely make our lives easier. It works when we work, fewer forms to fill in and indisputable evidence should an accident occur, smart sat nav has got be more than just the way forward.
Alisdair Suttie
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