—that many fleet safety professionals dread

By Art Liggio, President and CEO, Driving Dynamics

For most of my adult life, I’ve been a huge fan of Frank Sinatra’s music. One of his big holiday hits is a song written by Sammy Cohn and Jule Styne called the Christmas Waltz. Having recently heard the song one of the themes, “It’s that time of year,” kept playing over and over in my head. While the song is a romantic offering of the Christmas season, these lyrics resonant with me for much more serious reasons.

Still a number of weeks away from Christmas, we’re now about to enter our wonderful holiday season with the arrival of Thanksgiving. Of course, as a fleet safety professional, I’m also acutely aware that it’s that time of year, when we unfortunately experience some of the worst crashes and traffic fatality statistics.

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— and the costs associated with it are just as troubling

In a study conducted earlier this year, Zendrive found that 69 million drivers use their phones each day (100 times more than NHTSA estimates). With distracted driving becoming the new drunk driving, what are the cost implications for fleets?

This 65-page eBook serves as an ultimate guide for fleet managers who want to cut costs, differentiate and win. Although distracted driving has been fueled by the rise of mobile devices, Zendrive has transformed ordinary cell phones into super-accurate safety tools capable of helping your fleet save millions. Download “Winning in the Era of Distracted Driving” to learn how new driver safety technologies can protect both your drivers and your business bottom line!

Get Your Free Copy

By Mark Boada, Executive Editor

Maybe it’s all the ballyhoo about how autonomous vehicles will make our roads crash-free, or maybe senior management at organizations that have a fleet are beginning to understand the true cost of crashes and expect fleet managers to prevent them.

Whatever the reason, the fleet industry at large is starting to take a zero traffic crash rate as a legitimate goal to talk about.

At least, that’s an impression you could have easily drawn by attending last month’s Network of Employers for Traffic Safety (NETS) “Strength in Numbers” Benchmark Conference in Frisco, Texas (www.trafficsafety.org). And it represents a sea-change in attitudes toward fleet crashes.

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International Fleet World

Thilo von Ulmenstein, managing partner, Fleetcompetence Group, looks at the benefits of adopting a Europe- or global-wide fleet policy.

With an intelligent strategy for the management of cross-country fleets, considerable cost reductions are achievable. But this requires changeability at two levels: internal policies and the supplier portfolio.

In today’s level of globalization, there are hardly any companies that are active in just one market.

Read the article in International Fleet World

The Hill

Americans bought more than 1 million cumulative electric vehicles bringing the U.S. auto market a long way from when the first mass-market EVs were introduced in 2010.

But for a country addicted to cars, the reality is that EVs still comprise under 2 percent of new domestic vehicle sales.

An accelerated transition to EVs – including battery, plug-in hybrid and hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles – is critical to help prevent climate disaster and requires a concerted effort from automakers, government and advocacy groups. Failure to do so will put the U.S. auto industry at a global disadvantage, slow the cleanup of local pollution, and help usher in potentially catastrophic climate impacts.

Read the article at The Hill.

The Detroit Bureau

Ford is continuing to grow its mobility business, partnering with Walmart to use autonomous vehicles to make deliveries.

Postmates, a delivery service company will work with Ford, initially using vehicles driven by people to deliver goods. Initial delivery runs will help develop the routing for autonomous vehicles.

“Before self-driving cars can go mainstream, we must get a better sense of how people want to interact with them,” Tom Ward, Walmart senior vice president for digital operations, said in a statement on Thursday.

Read the article at The Detroit Bureau.

Fortune

Ford is expanding its horizons with plans to launch a self-driving ride-share service in 2021.

It’s a direction that will ultimately clash with the likes of Uber, Lyft, and General Motors (GM), among others.

Ford has been testing a self-driving Fusion in Miami for nine months. The cars are expensive but “the cost per mile for transportation for a person or a business is going to be lower and will be profitable. for us,” Sherif Marakby, CEO of Ford Autonomous Vehicles.

Read the article at Fortune.

The Detroit News

Electronic driver assist systems may not keep vehicles in their lanes or spot stationary objects in time to avoid a crash.

The word “pilot” by automakers in naming their systems can make some owners believe the vehicles can drive themselves. Drivers should always be ready to take control.

“These systems are made as an aid to driving, they are not autonomous, despite all of the hype around vehicle autonomy,” said Greg Brannon, AAA’s director of automotive engineering. “Clearly having ‘pilot’ in the name may imply a level of unaided driving, which is not correct for the current state of the development of these systems.”

Read the article at The Detroit News.

Detroit Free Press

Automakers have warned that their costs to build and subsequently sell new cars will rise because every car assembled in the U.S. contains a large percentage of foreign parts.

Toyota has said the costs of its cars could rise by thousands. General Motors has said it would be forced to downsize and cut jobs.

“I think it’ll push us into a recession or a depression,” Gary Shapiro, CEO of Consumer Technology Association said. “It’ll put a lot of companies out of business. We’re looking at a potentially difficult first quarter if that happens.”

Read the article at Detroit Free Press.

By Andrew Boada, Editor at Large

More and more fleets are getting on board the zero emissions bandwagon these days, and so are accepting TCOs that are higher than those for fossil-fuelled cars and trucks in order to acquire electric vehicles.

And while it’s true that at the tailpipe, hybrids (HEVs) and battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) emit fewer no greenhouse gas emissions, the bigger picture reveals another story.

The truth – which may be a surprise to some and appear to be heresy to others – is that when you consider the proverbial bottom line, both financially and environmentally, internal combustion vehicles (ICEVs) may be the way to go for fleets, at least for most locations and for the time being.

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