Harness the Power of Big Data
One of the frequent topics voiced when fleet professionals get together is how to most effectively manage the plethora of data they have available to them. Focusing on the most important and useful data is a challenge when you’re overwhelmed with a sea of information.
In Safety & Risk, Art Liggio, President of Driving Dynamics, talks about using event-driven big data to support safety improvements—using the driver as the resource in Learning to Stay Ahead Using Data: A Holistic View of Incidents to Achieve Maximum Driver Safety Improvements.
Tom Callahan, President of Donlen, focuses on four vital analytics tools in his Big Data. Big Results. Big Future column: Too Much Data, Not Enough Time: 4 Tools Every Fleet Manager Needs When Managing Fleet Data.
Congratulations to Mr. Callahan for being honored with the Gold Executive of the Year American Business Stevie® Award in the Automotive, Transport Equipment and Transportation Category in the Annual American Business Awards yesterday!
Janice Sutton
Editor in Chief
Ford Telematics Maintenance Connect Enables Ford Commercial Customers to Connect Their Vehicles to Any Ford Service Center
Last week at the Ford Fleet Preview event in Dearborn, Telogis and Ford introduced Ford Telematics Maintenance Connect, an industry-first capability telematics software solution that enables Ford commercial customers to share key diagnostic and maintenance information with a Ford service center of their choice. Maintenance Connect delivers an easy, proactive and efficient path to improved vehicle maintenance, providing access to certified Ford service technicians and parts, and helping to reduce costs associated with unanticipated service needs and vehicle downtime.
Maintenance Connect will be available this summer for all existing and new Ford Telematics customers. It provides actionable vehicle diagnostics and preventive maintenance schedules for more efficient and less costly vehicle repairs with maximized vehicle uptime. Through the Ford Telematics solution, Maintenance Connect is able to deliver the severity of Diagnostic Trouble Codes (DTCs) and Ford’s recommended course of corrective action.
Don’t Get Burned by a Towing Con!
By John Wolford, CEI director of client and provider services
How much should you pay for a tow? $100? $200? How about $8,000?
That’s how much one Canadian driver was asked to pay last year to get his car back from a body shop where a freelance tow truck took him after a rear-end collision in suburban Toronto. It’s part of a racket between repair shops and hungry tow truck operators to take advantage of unsuspecting drivers, and it’s happening all across North America.
How does it happen? Rogue tow truck operators listen to accident reports over police scanners and rush to the scene often even before the police and without police knowledge. They then offer to tow the vehicle to a shop they vouch for – the one who pays them a “finder’s fee” of a couple of hundred dollars.
Few Auto Insurers Cut Rates For New Safety Devices
After hearing good things about the latest in crash-prevention technologies, you decided to add automatic emergency braking to your new car.
The feature costs north of $2,000 on most vehicles. Yet even though data show it can prevent crashes, the discount from your insurer is likely to be zero.
Most insurers aren’t yet ready to give a break to car owners who invest in automatic braking or other new electronic technologies such as lane departure warning or blind spot detection.
Many companies are still compiling their own data to confirm the devices stop crashes, while others say automakers don’t always make it clear which models have the new technologies.
Auto Industry Unites to Take Countermeasures against Hackers
Automakers have gotten more serious about protecting motorists from car-related cyber threats, and not a moment too soon.
Amid growing concern from Congress and the traveling public, a dozen major manufacturers established an Information Sharing and Analysis Center (Auto-ISAC), which became fully operational in January. Already, the organization’s leaders say they’ve thwarted attacks by sharing threat intelligence and information on vulnerabilities.
