Tips for Optimal Government Fleet Vehicle Acquisition
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.
Hello from Louisville!
FMW is at NAFA's 2019 I&E, and we're dazzled, as much by the host city, Louisville, Kentucky and its brand-new International Conference center, as we are at the way NAFA has repackaged the show into three days for the first time.
By all appearances, the event is setting new records for attendance and the number of exhibitors.
Tune in next week for our take on NAFA's newest member service, "NAFA Communities," a year-round opportunity to network online and share best practices with colleagues in the same industry.
Janice Sutton
Editor in Chief
Increased Speed Limits are Tied to 37,000 Deaths Over 25 Years
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)
A ‘No-Deal Brexit’ Jeopardizes Auto Industry
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.
Who Owns Your Vehicle’s Data? You or the OEM?
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?
