With driverless cars, artificial intelligence may completely change the trucking industry, but some businesses are utilizing cutting-edge technology to make their fleet more productive and the vehicles safer.
An artificial intelligence (A.I.) “coach,” developed by software company Samsara, can scan environments and even monitor drivers by analyzing video data. By analyzing the cab-facing and road-facing cameras in real-time, the A.I. gives a driver in-cab audible coaching and instantly notifies the company’s headquarters.
A Florida-based company that makes use of the software is Good Greek Moving & Storage.
“The A.I. software will alert us if a driver is on the phone, if the driver’s texting, if the driver is smoking, because they have no smoking policy,” company founder & CEO Spero Georgedakis told FOX Business. “So it’s safety features. It’s also making sure that they’re following company policy as well.”
Georgedakis adds, “We can check the speed. We can check whether to make sure that they’re following all the laws of the road, including stopping at stop signs, stopping at red lights. Hard stopping. We can monitor all that.”
As you can expect, the technology is handling possible legal issues. An effective tool in one of the states with the highest insurance rates and the highest litigation rates in the nation.
Good Greek Director of Operations Chris Byrne says, “It’s going to pick up everything that happens before, during and after the accident as well as it’ll stay on through the process. And what that does is provides both sides of the story.”
Lower expenses are therefore another advantage of the increased safety, according to Georgedakis: “We got less incidents of claims, whether that be truck damage, accidents and so forth or even workers compensation claims. In fact, we’ve seen a decrease in our insurance costs and our worker comp rebates as a result of using this A.I. software.”