The new California cell phone law goes into effect 7/1/08. Now drivers can be cited for using their cell phones while driving, unless they use a hands free device.
See the CA Cell Phone Law document here.
While GPS Insight users DO use cell phone communication to send and receive group-wide or individual text messages, and to annotate their stops (e.g. they’re stopped when sending them…), overall, the amount of communication while they are driving is lessened significnatly.
A dispatch person may just choose a single group (or all vehicles) and instantly map them with a couple clicks:
Now if I want to see where a particular vehicle is (or which vehicle is closest to a particular area) I can just double click on that vehicle:
Additionally, we now have given our customers the ability to use cell phone text messages to find the closest 10 vehicles to another vehicle or location (within 10 miles, which is configurable). For instance, if you want to know the 10 closest vehicles to “TC1-CREW” (above), this customer can send a text message of “gps tc1-crew close” and receive a text message of the closest vehicles, how far they are, which direction, and if they are moving (and how fast or for how long have they been stopped).
Additionally the customer can just send “gps TC1-CREW” and get a text message of where that vehicle is. This is even useful if you don’t feel like walking to a computer to find out. A quick SMS text message is returned within seconds (almost instantly on AT&T, maybe 10 seconds on Verizon, our two carriers of choice). It tells you the address (or landmark), and vehicle status (stopped 10 minutes, idle stop 20 minutes, 72 mph NW, etc.). You can even abbreviate the truck name, or give a partial truck name which will return all vehicles matching (e.g. TC will return both TC1 and TC2). Here is the “console” record of some sample activity. Bear in mind the “Message” is coming from, and being sent back to the driver’s/supervisor’s cell phone:
(We break it up into multiple text messages for easy reading when necessary)
Also bear in mind if you have a higher end phone, we can help you easily display all your vehicles on a map on your cell phone.
Zooming down:
This is very useful to keep track of your fleet, but has a nice side benefit of helping your drivers to avoid breaking the new California (and other states’) cell phone laws while driving.
Rob.