By John F. Wysseier, President and CEO, The CEI Group, Inc.

Imagine that you and everybody in your organization has completely accurate, detailed and real-time information about every transaction you conduct with your customers and suppliers as well as all the data collected by the sensors on your machinery and equipment.

Imagine further that it is the same information at every moment that every one of your customers, suppliers and business partners has.

Finally, imagine that the information is both incorruptible and secure from hackers and cybercriminals.

Sound too good to be true? Well, that’s the promise that proponents and early adopters see in a new and burgeoning approach to managing and sharing digital information called blockchain. It’s called “distributed ledger technology,” a data base architecture invented in 2008 to support the creation of so-called unregulated “crypto-currencies” like Bitcoin. The good news is that blockchain is almost infinitely adaptable to transfers of any kind of information, so, no matter what business you’re in, sooner or later it’s coming to you.

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By Mark Boada, Executive Editor

With all the electronics built into and being added to today’s vehicles, it’s often said that cars are computers on wheels, generating and capturing tons of data that fleets are using in all sorts of ways to increase their efficiency, reduce costs and save lives.

The question is: who owns the data — you or the company that built the car?

This isn’t merely a rhetorical question, though, because OEMs have been studying and planning for years how to make money on all that data by selling it. To whom? Well, insurance companies, for one, but not just them. They want to sell it to everybody who wants to use it, and if the OEMs get their way, that means fleets, too.

So, let me ask: how do you feel about paying for your own data?

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By Robert Martinez, Deputy Commissioner, New York City Police Department

Vehicle acquisition is one of the most important segments of fleet management.

This critical part of fleet management relies on budgets, future forecasting, mission, mission changes, and many other factors. If you get it right you will be ahead of the game, if not you will be sinking quickly.

Some might ask how hard can it be to spend thousands of dollars, or in some cases millions of dollars, buying nice new vehicles. You could only be a hero buying and giving out new vehicles, right? That is true, however, only if you do it right! What does it take to get it right? Luck, knowledge, money, freedom to make decisions, fully understanding your organization and its future, to name a few.

To reduce the role that luck plays in acquisition, it can help to follow these lessons I’ve learned throughout my career.

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Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS)

A new study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety shows that over the past 25 years, rising speed limits have cost nearly 37,000 lives, including more than 1,900 in 2017 alone,

“About 10,000 people a year die in speed-related crashes,” IIHS President David Harkey says. “We can reduce this toll through effective, high-visibility enforcement and traffic engineering measures. Reasonable speed limits also have a crucial role to play, as our new study demonstrates.”

Read the article at Insurance Institute for Highway Safety ((IIHS)

The Washington Post

An upstart British company called Wayve, claims to have created self-driving car technology replicating the sophisticated problem-solving and spontaneity of human drivers.

The company released a video of a vehicle navigating through the narrow streets of Cambridge, England with only 20 hours of training data.

“Every time a safety driver intervenes or takes over control of the vehicle, we learn from that experience and that feedback,” Alex Kendall, the company’s co-founder and chief technology officer, says in the video. “And with each piece of data we’re able to train our system to get better and better and better.”

Read the article at The Washington Post,

The Detroit Bureau

European Union investigators have determined that Volkswagen, BMW and Daimler AG colluded to limit the use of exhaust-improving technologies for gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles.

The result limited the access of Europeans to less polluting cars, but not the price.

The investigation’s focus was on selective catalytic reduction systems to reduce harmful nitrogen oxides emissions of diesel passenger cars through the injection of urea, which is also called AdBlue, in the exhaust gas stream.

Read the article at The Detroit Bureau.

The Washington Post

To prevent drunken driving, a newly-designed universal built-in ignition interlock device would make an instantaneous and precise reading of every driver’s blood alcohol level (BAC) when the driver attempts to start the vehicle.

The device would take BAC samples in one of two ways. A breath-based system would gather a whiff of a driver’s ambient breath. A touch-based system would analyze the touch of a driver’s finger, perhaps from a vehicle’s starter button or the steering wheel.

It would effectively take away the keys by preventing the vehicle from starting.

Officials behind the public-private effort to develop the technology — known as the Driver Alcohol Detection System for Safety — say the device will be ready for commercial fleets next year.

Read the article at The Washington Post.

Fortune

Britain, the world’s fifth largest economy, will crash out of the EU unless Parliament passes Prime Minister Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement.

Should a no-deal Brexit happen, then Britain would have to operate under World Trade Organization rules, meaning all cars would incur 10% tariffs the moment they cross the U.K.-EU border.

Ford Europe Chairman Steven Armstrong told the Associated Press that the automaker would also “have to consider seriously the long-term future of our investments in the country” in the event of a no-deal Brexit, adding that “a no-deal Brexit, would be a disaster for the automotive industry in the U.K. and within that, of course, I count Ford Motor Company.”

Read the article at Fortune.

By Paul Atchley, PhD, eDriving’s Brain Scientist Advisor

Imagine one day that you, the fleet safety manager, receive a report about your drivers that reveals that about 1 in 10 of your drivers is addicted to a substance that, when used, significantly impairs their ability to drive safely.

And further imagine the report also tells you that almost all of the remaining drivers are probably not “addicted” in the clinical sense, but they are highly compelled to take the same substance while driving and admit they keep the substance in their vehicles and also admit to occasional use.

This is that report. For a little more than a decade since the release of the iPhone, Silicon Valley has been finding ways to increase the degree to which the “phones” and apps are able to grab and hold the attention of their owners. Some very bright people do careful work to enhance the psychological compulsion to use our smart devices constantly.

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International Fleet World

By Natalie Middleton

Although fewer people died on European roads last year, further concrete and swift actions on road figures are needed, as shown by new road fatality figures from the European Commission.

The preliminary data shows there were around 25,100 fatalities in road accidents in the EU28 in 2018; down 21% compared to 2010, and 1% compared to 2017.

Although the figures confirm that European roads are by far the safest in the world, they also show that the EU is off track to reach its target of halving the number of road deaths by 2020.

Read the article at International Fleet World