The high-tech human: Raising driver and fleet safety

From driver coaching to the latest AI-powered tools enhancing road safety, we caught up with Lytx® to discuss the interplay between human-led and technology-based solutions.

Improving safety is a never-ending mission.

Human behaviour remains the single biggest factor in road safety, contributing to as many as 95% of all collisions.

Every life lost on the road is one life too many. Every injury is one injury too many.

We asked Oliver Temple, Regional Senior Director, EMEA & APAC from IRU member Lytx Inc., how we can make road transport even safer.

What's the key to safer driving?

To create lasting safe driving practices for commercial drivers, a strategic blend of in-person and manager-led feedback, self-directed learning, AI-powered coaching, and structured recognition is required.

This is the finding of a new report from the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering Department of Computer Science and Design Lab, which Lytx sponsored to better understand the research behind coaching methods. It's the most comprehensive academic review of coaching models used across commercial fleets.

It concluded that personalised, manager-led coaching remains the most effective method for sustained behaviour change. But scalable results are best achieved when human feedback is combined with in-cab alerts and self-review systems.

Key findings from the UC San Diego study that support the use of manager-led coaching for optimal safety include:

• 24% improvement in driving behaviour when manager-led coaching is used compared to passive methods
• 50% reduction in hazardous incidents after a single ten-minute self-coaching review session in a field test
• Significant improvements in 7 out of 12 directly observed driving behaviours following manager-led coaching

The study recommends:

• Brief regular face-to-face coaching sessions for maximum driver engagement
• Positive recognition to be thoughtfully layered into risk coaching programmes
• Coaching models that are sufficiently flexible and varied to serve both high-risk and high-performing drivers, as well as new and experienced drivers
• AI-driven systems to triage, escalate and personalise coaching sessions

Effective coaching isn't about choosing between humans or machines - it's about making each smarter together.

What new tech is making its way into fleets?

As global demand for smarter, safe and more efficient fleet solutions accelerates, innovation helps protect a world in motion. We're driven by fleets that prioritise telematics and want to add video while keeping safety at the forefront.

Our dash cam solution, the Lytx Surfsight AI-14, powered by advanced technology features and combining machine vision and AI, is a good example.

The solution has a range of features that advance safety:

• Proactive risk detection: Machine vision and AI technology proactively identifies and detects driving risk in real time
• Real-time driver alerts: Visual and audio in-cab alerts help keep drivers attentive and focused, promoting safer road habits
• Integrated touchscreen: The only dash cam in its class with an LCD touchscreen, making installation, configuration, and operation intuitive and efficient
• Configurable: Flexible audio recording options can enable the capture of sound inside and outside the vehicle
• Road-facing ADAS: Features include following distance, critical distance, and rolling stop. Pedestrian detection and red-light detection will be added soon
• Passenger limit: It notifies fleets when cabin occupancy exceeds the defined threshold and captures valuable data to support investigations, exonerate drivers, and recover assets
• Tamper-resistant design: Built to deter unauthorised removal, vandalism and theft for added security and reliability
• Event tagging made easy: Convenient record buttons let drivers mark key events, simplifying video review and retrieval
• Seamless updates: Over-the-air firmware updates ensure the device stays current, eliminating the need for manual downloads

How can fleets anticipate unpredictable risks?

Today's fleets face a complex landscape of unpredictable hazards, from sudden weather events and construction zones to increased pedestrian and cyclist activity.

Road conditions are worsening, with weather-related crashes and pedestrian fatalities rising year on year. Traditional risk management technology falls short, ignoring the full context behind risky environments and failing to warn proactively.

Our new Dynamic Risk technology provides an advanced suite of features with tools designed to transform how commercial fleets identify, assess and act on environmental risk in real time.

By harnessing data from our extensive network of cloud-connected cameras, the new system leverages powerful data science, historical context, and live environmental inputs to equip fleets with a comprehensive, forward-looking view of safety and operational challenges.