Rich Craw­ford, CEO of Sam­baSafety, gives us some insight into his company’s con­tin­u­ous mon­i­tor­ing solu­tion to iden­tify dri­ver risk. He says it’s not enough to pull an MVR on a dri­ver once a year; many vio­la­tions can hap­pen within a year.

He says, “Think of us as a salesforce.com for dri­ver risk man­age­ment. Sam­basafety is a plat­form where our cus­tomers can plug in dif­fer­ent mod­ules — telem­at­ics data, traf­fic vio­la­tion data, even employer only data — and we can bring all of that data together in a com­pre­hen­sive sin­gle plat­form and then present that back up to our cus­tomers as action­able insight — giv­ing them the abil­ity to take cor­rec­tive actions before it becomes an issue.”

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NAFA Pres­i­dent Claude Mas­ters, CAFM: “While NAFA has a ‘fuel-neutral’ phi­los­o­phy, the Asso­ci­a­tion rec­og­nizes that elec­tric vehi­cles will be a major player in how fleets will get to their car­bon foot­print goals.”

By Michael Sheldrick, Senior Editor

If you like a good pun, and you’re inter­ested in a top-flight analy­sis of the prospects for elec­tric vehi­cles, you’ll love a com­pre­hen­sive new report from the Edi­son Elec­tric Insti­tute, the trade asso­ci­a­tion for investor-owned elec­tric util­i­ties: “Trans­porta­tion Elec­tri­fi­ca­tion: Util­ity Fleets lead­ing the Charge.” Even if you hate puns you’ll want to read it if you are inter­ested in the out­look for elec­tri­fi­ca­tion — and if you’re not, you should be. This report makes a strong case that EVs have a promis­ing future.

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As part of a mutual com­mit­ment to com­mer­cial fleet safety, Fleet­mat­ics Group PLC  and Fleet Safety Insti­tute recently announced the avail­abil­ity of a co-authored white paper. The announce­ment comes in con­junc­tion with the Fleet Safety Con­fer­ence that took place from July 22–23 in Schaum­burg, IL.

The paper enti­tled, “Ensur­ing Fleet and Dri­ver Safety: How Tech­nol­ogy Helps Ser­vice Busi­nesses Adhere to Reg­u­la­tions and Pro­tect Employ­ees,” is designed to help edu­cate com­mer­cial fleet-related busi­nesses about com­mon safety-related issues and how to use tech­nol­ogy to address them.

READ MORE, and DOWNLOAD THE WHITEPAPER

On the evening of Octo­ber 19, 2002, pedi­a­tri­cian Greg Gul­bransen walked out his front door to move the family’s sport-utility vehi­cle into the dri­ve­way. Unbe­knownst to him, his 2-year-old son Cameron fol­lowed. Gul­bransen was back­ing up when he felt a small bump, dis­cov­er­ing only after it was too late that he’d acci­den­tally run over and killed the boy.

On March 31, 2014, the National High­way Trans­porta­tion Safety Admin­is­tra­tion (NHTSA) final­ized a long-delayed reg­u­la­tion meant to reduce back-overs, a key part of a 2007 dri­ving safety act named for Cameron Gul­bransen. The reg­u­la­tion sets a 2018 dead­line for rearview mon­i­tor­ing tech­nol­ogy to be stan­dard on pas­sen­ger vehi­cles sold or leased in the United States.

Dri­vers don’t have to wait until 2018, though, to get a car with a cam­era that shows them what’s behind their back bumper. 

♦ Back-up cam­era sys­tems will have to meet fed­eral stan­dards, but how they oper­ate varies.
The button-size devices are posi­tioned so dri­vers can see peo­ple or objects that are oth­er­wise unde­tectable using a side or rearview mir­ror or by glanc­ing over their shoul­der. When NHTSA’s rear vis­i­bil­ity reg­u­la­tion takes effect, it will require rearview tech­nol­ogy to dis­play a 10-by-20-foot area directly behind the vehi­cle. The rule also requires sys­tems to show the dri­ver an image of the area no more than 2 sec­onds after they put the vehi­cle into reverse.

READ MORE to get the details

Are you prepar­ing dri­vers and other per­son­nel on what to do in case of a crash? Fleets should pre­pare for and prac­tice what to do in the event of a seri­ous acci­dent just like they do for fire drills — from top man­age­ment to dis­patch­ers to dri­vers. What dri­vers and other com­pany per­son­nel do imme­di­ately fol­low­ing an acci­dent can help you win a law­suit or cause you to lose one.

These seven steps should be taught in ori­en­ta­tion, prac­ticed, and reviewed on an ongo­ing basis. Lam­i­nated cheat-sheets out­lin­ing the steps that are kept in the vehi­cle can help dri­vers remem­ber the steps in the con­fu­sion of an actual crash aftermath.

1. Remain calm. Before you do any­thing, take a deep breath. Don’t admit fault to any­one — even a sim­ple “I’m sorry” could be con­strued by a court as an admit­tance of guilt.

READ MORE for the remain­ing steps.

Are you involved in fleet man­age­ment, and on the fence about imple­ment­ing a GPS track­ing solu­tion? In a recent study, fleet exec­u­tives in the United States were asked why they have not imple­mented GPS track­ing to their fleet oper­a­tions yet. The top three most com­mon rea­sons iden­ti­fied were lack of bud­get, the need to do more research, and the belief that it wouldn’t help.

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NAFA’s 2014 Inter­na­tional Fleet Acad­emy is the pre­mier global fleet con­fer­ence for a good rea­son. Fleet pro­fes­sion­als who attend the IFA learn from the best and most knowl­edge­able indi­vid­u­als on the sub­ject of global fleet man­age­ment. Atten­dees can share infor­ma­tion with col­leagues in an inti­mate set­ting arranged by NAFA, the most trusted name in fleet.

From dis­cus­sions regard­ing cloud-based loca­tion intel­li­gence soft­ware plat­forms, to fleet cen­tral­iza­tion ver­sus region­al­ized struc­ture, stan­dard­iza­tion of goods and ser­vices, staffing, how to iden­tify and visit the right regional peo­ple, and more, IFA pro­vides unpar­al­leled edu­ca­tion for fleet pro­fes­sion­als with inter­na­tional oversight.

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Join Your Fleet Col­leagues in Las Vegas at the 2014 AFLA Annual Conference!

The annual con­fer­ence of the Auto­mo­tive Fleet and Leas­ing Asso­ci­a­tion (AFLA) will be held Sep­tem­ber 7–10, 2014 at the M Resort & Spa Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. The theme for this year’s con­fer­ence is Learn, Inno­vate, Win: Improv­ing Your Odds for Fleet Suc­cess. This is AFLA’s sec­ond trip to Las Vegas, return­ing after a suc­cess­ful con­fer­ence in 2010.

The theme is reflec­tive of AFLA’s ded­i­ca­tion to offer­ing top-notch speak­ers and con­tent for an afford­able con­fer­ence fee and a great return on your invest­ment. Vince Poscente, Wel­don Long, and Scott Bur­rows will all give keynote pre­sen­ta­tions at this year’s con­fer­ence. AFLA is excited to part­ner with these great speak­ers to present key pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment top­ics dur­ing the conference.

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Last week, the John­son County, Iowa, Board of Super­vi­sors approved a procla­ma­tion encour­ag­ing autonomous vehi­cle test­ing as a pub­lic safety and eco­nomic devel­op­ment ini­tia­tive.

The procla­ma­tion passed unan­i­mously on a 5–0 vote.

“When you con­sider what’s already avail­able, such as hands-free park­ing, this tech­nol­ogy is utterly amaz­ing,” said Janelle Ret­ting, John­son County Super­vi­sor.  “I’m excited that John­son County can be on the fore­front of test­ing, inno­va­tion, and safety, pro­vid­ing jobs and oppor­tu­ni­ties for our citizens.”

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We are huge fans of the CNW Research Newslet­ter ‘Retail Auto­mo­tive Sum­mary,’ Art Spinella’s fact-filled and enter­tain­ing monthly look at the auto­mo­tive mar­ket. While the newslet­ter has appeal for retail­ers, Spinella also keeps us up to date on related sta­tis­tics and trends within fleet remarketing.

The July newslet­ter opens: “Given their druthers, con­sumers would rather buy an off-lease vehi­cle than one that has been repos­sessed or spent its early years as a daily rental. Depend­ing on the mar­ket seg­ment, the pre­mium a shop­per is will­ing to pay for a CPO ver­sion of a pickup, for exam­ple, is more than $800 com­pared to expect­ing a dis­count of more than $4,100 if it had been in a fleet.”

Read more to learn why the dif­fer­ence in prices.