BY NICK FORTUNA
When Ernst Concrete, an Ohio Contractors Association and AGC Georgia member, really needed its old dashcam system to perform, the hardware failed, leaving the company in a bind. Burned by that experience, Ernst Concrete upgraded to Motive’s new dashcams powered by artificial intelligence, resulting in meaningful cost savings and improvements to driver performance, according to Paul Fly, director of risk and safety at Ernst.
Several years ago, two truck drivers from Ernst Concrete were involved in separate auto accidents that resulted in costly lawsuits. The truck drivers weren’t at fault, but since the old dashcam system hadn’t recorded the accidents, the company couldn’t mount a robust defense in court.
“The impact of not capturing large events is that you don’t have that product to defend yourself,” Fly said. “More times than not, the accidents are very defendable. We were not at fault.”
Founded in 1946, Ernst Concrete is a family-owned operation based in Vandalia, Ohio, and has about 800 trucks delivering ready-mix concrete and other construction materials to jobsites. With such a large fleet, any improvements to driver safety and risk mitigation add up quickly, and that’s been the case for Ernst Concrete since implementing Motive’s driver-safety solution.
Over a 13-month period, Motive’s dashcams resulted in a 97% reduction in cellphone usage while driving, Fly said. Similarly, distracted driving decreased 83%, and close-following events plunged 81%. The system’s advanced computer-vision algorithms process images in real time to detect more than a dozen risky driving behaviors, including holding a cellphone in your hand and looking down from the road.
In a case like that, the system emits an audible tone and a verbal reminder to the driver to keep his eyes on the road. The face of the dashcam also provides a visual alert. The system saves the video recording of the incident and makes it readily accessible to fleet managers as a training tool.
Similarly, the AI-powered dashcams monitor the speed of the truck and its following distance, so whenever the truck gets too close to the vehicle in front of it, the driver gets an alert, and the incident is recorded. The same goes for incidents of hard braking, rolling stops, running red lights or stop signs, unsafe parking, and even driver drowsiness. Motive’s AI can flag excessive yawning that indicates a driver is too tired to continue.
In a study conducted by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, the Motive AI dashcam was found to generate alerts related to several of these unsafe driving behaviors three to four times more reliably than leading competitors in the space, the company said.
If drivers obstruct the dashcam’s view, intentionally or not, they’ll get an alert to correct the issue, and that incident is recorded, ensuring compliance.
“I have never seen reductions [in unsafe driving behavior] like this within 13 months, and with AI technology, you can coach your drivers and design training programs for those who need additional training,” Fly said.
Ernst Concrete estimates its total cost savings from using Motive at $6.5 million, a return on investment of about 2,000%. Since the company’s drivers are getting into fewer accidents, insurance premiums are down, there are fewer lawsuits to deal with, and it’s losing less productivity to damaged trucks and injured drivers, Fly said.
When accidents do occur, the company can count on getting video evidence that could absolve its drivers of responsibility. Video clips also can help companies expedite their insurance claims. Accident videos upload to the system within seconds, minimizing the risk of lost footage. Video is captured even in catastrophic accidents, and managers are alerted with relevant video and telematics data.
“The AI technology and the quality of the system are very good,” Fly said. “We’re using the videos that we download as evidence in our defense that we can give to our attorneys if there’s a lawsuit.”
Widespread Adoption
In October, Motive had more than a million dashcams deployed across North America, with about 1.3 million drivers in its system, according to Abhishek Gupta, vice president of product. Customers typically see their accident rate decrease by up to 65%, and their insurance premiums dip about 25%, he said. Customers purchase the dashcams upfront and pay a monthly subscription fee for the software as a service.
Motive’s dashcams can be installed in less than 10 minutes without a mechanic, and built-in driver training content allows an entire fleet to become familiar with the system quickly. There’s also a 24/7 support team to help clients address any issues.
“By reducing many unsafe driving behaviors, customers are able to decrease their accident rate fairly substantially,” Gupta said. “That results in significant savings that they can put back into their business.”
For its fleet, Ernst Concrete installed the dual-facing Motive Dashcam, which records activity within the cab as well as the driver’s view of the road. There’s also a model that records only the driver’s view through the front windshield. The dashcams can be paired with a smaller Motive model called Omnicam, which records side- and rear-view activity for a 360-degree view of the truck.
With the Omnicam, companies can monitor the loading and unloading of trucks, giving them video evidence of unsafe practices that result in workplace injuries.
Fly said that when Ernst Concrete installed the dashcams, he and his drivers were surprised by the number of incidents the system recorded. But with the system monitoring their performance in real time and alerting them when they slip up, drivers quickly adjusted their habits, and the number of recorded incidents dropped precipitously.
Drivers can watch their own videos and track their progress with Motive’s smartphone app.
“Drivers will come back to the plant and say, ‘I know, I know, I was following too closely. I won’t do that again,’ so they’re essentially coaching themselves,” Fly said.
Motive’s platform enables fleet managers to gamify driving operations, creating a competitive environment to promote safety, Gupta said. The system can assign a safety score to each driver based on the number of infractions accumulated over a period of time, and managers can decide whether to penalize certain behaviors, such as tailgating, hard braking, or cellphone usage, more than others.
The customizable scoring system allows fleet managers to prioritize the unsafe driving behaviors that are most common for that operation, maximizing the impact of gamification. At the end of each month or quarter, for example, the drivers with the highest safety scores can be rewarded with bonus pay, vacation days, or other prizes.
Rewarding Top Performers
With many contractors struggling to retain drivers, companies might be reticent to put workers under the microscope with a dashcam system. But Gupta said there are many reasons why drivers are comfortable with this new technology.
First, the dual-facing dashcam features a privacy mode, so activity in the cab is recorded only when drivers are actively working. The camera remains off while drivers sleep, eat, and recuperate from a long trip. Secondly, the system allows a fleet’s safest drivers to stand out from the pack, giving them a compelling case to ask for a raise.
With the Omnicam, drivers get full visibility of their blind spots, which addresses a leading cause of accidents. They also get a clear rearview picture to enhance safety and combat cargo theft.
“The camera is meant to be a tool to help you do your job better,” Gupta said. “Our customers don’t have people sitting around, watching what their drivers are doing all day long. The goal of the product is to reduce cellphone usage and distracted driving, not to watch you do your job. This tool also rewards good drivers. If you’re consistently driving safely, the camera and your safety score will show that.”
Motive’s system includes a new first-responder service for commercial drivers that expedites emergency response in the event of a severe collision. The service programmatically shares life-saving collision data such as vehicle location, driver name, make, model, license plate, and other important information with first responders after a severe collision.
Fleet managers have access to drivers’ dashcams through the Motive dashboard, so they can check on drivers who suddenly become unreachable. If there’s an emergency, the manager can call a priority 9-1-1 number and be connected to local first responders anywhere in North America, ensuring that injured drivers and other motorists get help quickly.
Motive’s safety team of more than 400 employees reviews customers’ safety videos to eliminate false positives. Their expertise in identifying unique, real-world scenarios significantly improves the accuracy of the company’s AI models, Gupta said. As a result, drivers aren’t penalized for mistakes they didn’t make, and managers can focus on truly unsafe driving behaviors.
As an example, the system may mistakenly believe that a driver has run a stop sign, when in reality, that stop sign was intended for traffic merging into the driver’s path. In that case, Motive’s safety team will view the recording, recognize the mistake, and overrule the system so the driver isn’t penalized. Having knowledgeable humans review safety videos gives drivers and managers greater confidence in the system’s fairness and effectiveness, Gupta said.
Given the many safety benefits of AI-powered dashcams, Gupta said he expects adoption of this technology to accelerate rapidly. Meanwhile, Motive is constantly working on new features to make its platform more effective and valuable to customers.
“We do expect to see the adoption of our AI capabilities increase dramatically,” Gupta said. “We ran a survey last year interviewing about a thousand transportation leaders, and the vast majority said they want to use AI to improve their operations, but only 25% had actually deployed it, which shows that this technology has the potential to make a broad impact.”