A national foodservice delivery company is equipping more than 45 vehicles in its 400-strong fleet with their very own guardians.
The Seeing Machines Guardian is a safeguard programme from AutoSense that can prevent its long-distance drivers from being needlessly distracted or falling asleep at the wheel.
The system comprises an in-cab sensor and forward-facing camera which track the micro movements of a driver’s eyes, facial expression and head to detect fatigue, distraction or inattention.
When the system detects a distraction or fatigue event, it automatically sounds an in-cab alarm and the driver’s seat automatically vibrates to alert the driver.
At the same time, the event data is sent to a Safeguard centre for analysis by experts who will, in the case of a verified event, notify the client’s on-call manager within 120 seconds.
The Guardian system is focused on incident prevention, mitigation and saving lives and combines with the Safeguard programme to ensure ongoing safety optimisation by continually improving policy and processes.
Bidfood national fleet manager and company director Dan Magrath says he took the initiative to trial the Guardian system more than nine months ago with the backing and funding support of the company’s heavy motor insurer NZI-Lumley.
His chain of responsibility as a company officer under the new legislation and losing two vehicles off the road in 2016 due to alleged driver fatigue were more than enough to persuade Magrath to seek out AutoSense managing director Charles Dawson in Taupo and arrange the Guardian system trial on some Bidfood vehicles.
“By the end of the trial, the branches which were part of it absolutely wanted to keep the Guardian system and so too did the drivers because they realised and understood that this was safety device to protect them from possible harm,” Magrath says.
“There is quite possibly not a driver alive who hasn’t at some point in their lives nodded off momentarily at the wheel of a vehicle.
“I believe that, in the future, all vehicles will have this technology but for now I wanted Bidfood to be a leader in adopting it early as part of our ongoing commitment to improving health and safety for our drivers as well as other road users.”
Magrath is adamant the cost of the system is more than worth the investment.
“Quite simply, the cost for three years of operating the Guardian Safeguard programme is less than half of a damaged Bidfood truck – or to put it simply, saving just one of our trucks will pay for the machines more than three times over.
“We have 45 long-distance fleet vehicles that leave the depot early in the morning and don’t return until the evening and some are travelling in areas with little cellphone coverage for great distances.
“Because of the uniqueness of our operation, we have a standard operating procedure for the drivers to use when they are within a coverage area and we have another standard operating procedure for them when outside the coverage area.
“We often have a rash of alerts when the system goes into a new truck or there’s a new driver on board but this behaviour settles down very quickly.”
Magrath says managing the entire fleet is made easier thanks to having supply relationships with NZI Lumley, EROAD and AutoSense – all three are integrated business partners.
“I’ve been very happy with the support and back up from Charles Dawson and the Auto Sense team, especially as their relationship with Fatigue Management Systems has also helped us identify drivers with sleep apnoea issues and enabled us to put a management plan in place for those employees.”
