April is Dis­tracted Dri­ving Aware­ness Month, but maybe the news hasn’t reached Apple yet. In recently announc­ing CarPlay, Apple said it was ‘giv­ing dri­vers a smarter, safer & more fun way to use iPhone in the car.’ Really?

By Michael Sheldrick, Senior Edi­tor, Fleet Man­age­ment Weekly

Last month at the Geneva Auto Show, Apple announced that a num­ber of OEMS — Fer­rari, Mercedes-Benz, and Volvo showed imple­men­ta­tions of Apple CarPlay. Since then, Hyundai announced that it will incor­po­rate CarPlay in the 2015 Sonata, avail­able some­time this sum­mer. Honda is also slated to release an imple­men­ta­tion, although a model hasn’t been named.

Apple is mak­ing much of the reduced ease with which com­mon in-vehicle info­tain­ment activ­i­ties can be com­pleted, includ­ing music, text-to-speech, hands-free voice calls, and maps and directions.

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Research shows that dis­trac­tions are respon­si­ble for nearly 80 per­cent of vehi­cle accidents.

By Daniel Brown, Risk Con­trol Tech­ni­cal Man­ager, Travelers

These days, most peo­ple under­stand that dis­tracted dri­ving is dan­ger­ous, yet the urge to stay con­nected and pro­duc­tive com­pels many to use their phones while dri­ving any­way. Research con­ducted by the Vir­ginia Tech Trans­porta­tion Insti­tute shows that these and other dis­trac­tions are respon­si­ble for nearly 80 per­cent of vehi­cle acci­dents, and the prob­lem isn’t just a con­cern for every­day drivers.

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Pre­sen­ter: Randy Owen, Mer­cury Asso­ciates, Inc.
June 4th 10:10am — 11:10am
Gov­ern­ment Fleet Expo & Con­fer­ence, San Diego, CA

Even the best-run fleets have room for improve­ment. An expe­ri­enced fleet con­sul­tant will reveal some of the most com­mon prob­lems he sees in his fleet audits and con­sul­ta­tions. Go behind closed doors to see sim­ple errors and mis­takes fleet man­agers of even the best fleets can avoid.

Mr. Owen is one of three co-founders of Mer­cury, the largest inde­pen­dent fleet man­age­ment con­sult­ing firm in North Amer­ica, which cel­e­brated its 10th anniver­sary in 2012.

Gov­ern­ment Fleet Expo & Con­fer­ence is an annual com­mu­nity gath­er­ing where pub­lic fleet pro­fes­sion­als can have real con­ver­sa­tions with their peers about daily chal­lenges, get fleet-specific train­ing, and access to the lat­est vehi­cles and tech­nol­ogy in the exhibit hall.

Sure, it seems like all GPS track­ing soft­ware is now web-based, but have you ever won­dered why? There are many ben­e­fits that come along with hav­ing an advanced hosted solu­tion – it’s con­ve­nient, updates are eas­ily avail­able, and it can be quickly cus­tomized to any cus­tomer request.

Web-based fleet track­ing solu­tions allow you to login from any com­puter, tablet or smart­phone by sim­ply log­ging in to your account. READ MORE about the con­ve­nience of always hav­ing a bird’s eye view over fleet activity.

As the coun­try rec­og­nizes National Dis­tracted Dri­ving Aware­ness Month, Sprint is remind­ing wire­less con­sumers to focus on dri­ving while behind the wheel, to not text or email while dri­ving, and to encour­age oth­ers to pro­mote dri­ver safety in their local communities.

Accord­ing to a 2013 study on traf­fic safety cul­ture by the AAA Foun­da­tion for Traf­fic Safety, nearly all dri­vers view tex­ting or email­ing while dri­ving as a very seri­ous threat to their own per­sonal safety and con­sider it com­pletely unacceptable.

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A telem­at­ics solu­tion that effec­tively employs Real-Time Ver­bal Coach­ing (RTVC) can give fleets and fleet man­agers a means to make dra­matic strides towards improv­ing dri­ver behav­ior and road safety.

Real-time ver­bal coach­ing is proac­tive, not reac­tive — and can actu­ally pre­vent acci­dents and enforce com­pli­ance, instead of merely record­ing and report­ing the events that have already occurred.

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Luann Dunker­ley, national sales man­ager for truck fleet ser­vices for the CEI Group, Inc., is the 2014 recip­i­ent of the National Pri­vate Truck Council’s Mem­ber­ship Devel­op­ment Award. Ms. Dunker­ley was one of six to receive the council’s Pro­fes­sional Lead­er­ship Awards, which “rec­og­nize indi­vid­u­als who have made sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to the National Pri­vate Truck Coun­cil [NPTC], their pro­fes­sion and the pri­vate truck­ing community.”

We spoke with Luann recently about how truck fleets can save time and money by out­sourc­ing their acci­dent man­age­ment activities.

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Belgian-based fleet and leas­ing soft­ware solu­tions provider, Sofico, has embarked on a high-tech recruit­ment drive to locate top cal­iber, expe­ri­enced busi­ness and IT pro­fes­sion­als to fuel its plans for fur­ther growth, while still main­tain­ing a high level of ser­vice for exist­ing customers.

Sofico, whose cus­tomers man­age more than one mil­lion vehi­cles world­wide through its leas­ing and fleet man­age­ment sys­tems, has seen its rev­enue grow by 54% over the last five years, and is expect­ing to increase its per­ma­nent staff of 120 by around 20% by the end of this year.

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