GPS Insight Blog

Aug 14 2011

I got caught speeding to Sedona

Category: Alerts,Driver Accountability,Google Earth,GPS Insight Employees,Identifying and eliminating speeding,Safety — rdonat @ 6:54 pm

Thankfully not by the police, but by GPS Insight.

I was heading to Sedona this afternoon with my family and got this alert by email, showing that I was doing 61 in a 35 MPH zone, along with a map showing I’m coming up on a curve:

Posted Speed Limit alert for me

I thought there was no way I would go that fast over the speed limit so when I got home from my trip, I checked GPS Insight to see if we had the right posted speed for that area.

We have an internal-use-only “pincushion” tool we use which shows the various speed limits based on which direction you’re traveling, relative to the roads nearby and some reasonable assumptions.

The pin says it changes from a 55 to a 35 a little way before my vehicle location was sent with instantaneous speed of 61:

GPS Insight "pincushion" posted sped limit tool

I thought that was unlikely, so I went down to street view, and found a 35 MPH speed sign right there (above, it’s the yellow pushpin):

Proof that it's a 35 MPH zone

I guess I was speeding.

So what’s my defense? I didn’t see the sign? At least I can measure the distance until the turn and see that there was LOTS of room to slow down before the curve that 35 MPH zone was put there for:

Rob speeding (61 in a 35)

You can see I measured 600 feet before the BEGINNING of the curve, which is plenty of time to get from 61 to 35. That’s 2 football fields. And since my prior max was 65 (in the info bubble) I was slowing — just not fast enough for the speed limit… But at least you can drill down and get some better context for the posted speed alert. That’s ideal — without the ability to easily drill down for more information, you don’t know the context of the speeding alert, and can’t make good decisions on how to approach (or not to approach) your drivers about these alerts.

So even GPS tracking company owners speed. Maybe it was so I had some good material for a blog article? Yeah, that was it.

Here is a picture from Sedona, by the way:

Sedona, Arizona

And I didn’t speed on the way home, as evidenced by the alerts report I ran for today for my vehicle (Nav2):

Run an alert history for my vehicle for today

But I did idle for 8 minutes while we stopped for snacks for the ride home (and my device went out of range when I pulled into the garage, since I live in the middle of nowhere, and my oil change and rotate tires maintenance items never got updated…):

My alerts for today

This is the point of having a GPS fleet tracking solution — set the alerts, and wait for your drivers to do something you want to be alerted to.

I’m paying for my own tickets and gas, and I know I’ve got a 4×4 and 600 feet to slow down before a curve in a pretty desolate area, so no real issues here. But you certainly want to know these types of things about your drivers.

Especially if it’s your money for fuel, drivers’ licenses at stake, and your liability should they be driving too fast.

Rob.

Tags: Fleet Tracking, fleet tracking software, gps speed tracking, gps tracking devices, posted speed alerts, truck tracking, Vehicle Tracking, vehicle tracking systems

Comments (0)

Jul 19 2011

GPS Insight helps a customer during a carjacking

Category: Extreme Return on Investment,Safety — rdonat @ 6:26 pm

We received this fax yesterday:

GPS Insight helps police arrest 2 carjackers

Our customer’s son was carjacked at gunpoint. The vehicle was quickly recovered and 2 suspects (and their firearm) were taken into custody.

The Press got it wrong — it was the customer’s cellphone which helped her track the vehicle and lead police to it. She was using our iPhone app to track the vehicle every 2 minutes. The GPS Insight device was inside the vehicle. Had it been a cellphone, they probably would have thrown it out the window.

So 2 bad guys should be going to jail for a long time.

We love these stories, and usually get one or two every month.

GPS Insight: $32.95 a month. Not losing your car, and putting the 2 guys who put a gun to your kid’s head in jail: Priceless.

Rob.

Tags: carjacking, Fleet Tracking, fleet tracking software, gps fleet tracking, GPS Tracking, gps tracking device, gps tracking software, gps vehicle tracking, theft recovery, vehicle recovery, Vehicle Tracking

Comments (0)

Jul 17 2011

GPS Insight saves my wife & daughter from 3 hours stranded in traffic

Category: Arizona,Google Earth,GPS Insight Employees,Safety — rdonat @ 6:21 pm

As my wife was driving back home after dropping my boys off for a week at sleep-away camp, she hit the worst traffic you can hit. Cars were stopped dead on a divided mountain road, and people were getting out of their cars since no one was going anywhere.

She called me up to check traffic online through GPS Insight (since she has a device on her car (named “nav2″).

I got “directions” from our directions dashlet, then turned on Traffic :

Directions from my wife's car to mine

I was able to instantly pull up the fact that there was an accident 3 miles ahead of her which had the road completely closed, and it was estimated to be closed another 3 hours.

Pulling up crash data from Google Traffic within GPS Insight's directions functionality

Then I pulled up her location and recent 30 minutes of history within our 3D mapping (Google Earth):

Pull up Nav2's current status and recent history

She said people were turning around and driving on the shoulder of the road BACKWARDS to get to the nearest off-ramp. I told her it was .5 miles.

My wife, .5 miles from the nearest offramp

She called me back and told me everyone was going the wrong way down the on-ramp to get over to the other side of the highway.

Within 3 minutes she had escaped a really bad traffic-jam, before it got jammed up too much behind her.

Then she needed alternate directions which I was able to get her instantly, as well as watch her progress on a route only about 20 miles out of the way.

Which sure beats waiting in traffic for 3 hours.

And a quick right-click “directions from/directions to” in Google Earth tells me she’ll be home in 39 minutes.

Directions/ETA and recent history

So I can fire up the grill and have dinner ready when they get home. As I was typing this, she texted me the same thing:

Better go make dinner

Now I really better make dinner.

Rob.

Tags: accidents, GPS Tracking, gps tracking device, gps tracking software, gps vehicle tracking, re-route employees, traffic, Vehicle Tracking, vehicle tracking device

Comments (0)

May 18 2011

New Harsh Braking/Rapid Acceleration Reports

Category: Graphs,Identifying and eliminating speeding,New Features,New Features,Reporting,Reports,Safety — rdonat @ 9:44 pm

We have added a new report in beta to GPS Insight which details your drivers’ aggressive driving habits.

[ This report ONLY works with the GPS Insight 3900 and 4000, and if you are an existing customer, you will need to ask your salesperson or support to turn it on, as it requires a firmware upgrade to your devices, which we are happy to do remotely (over the air). ]

You run it here:

Run the new GPS Insight Acceleration Reports

(Note there are both Acceleration and Acceleration Summary reports)

Here is the Summary Report, which helps you to identify your most aggressive accelerators (“gunner”) and decelerators (“braker”):

GPS Insight Acceleration Summary Report

As always, you can sort by clicking on any of the blue column headings. By clicking on one of the histogram graphs on the right you can compare the average acceleration/deceleration profile to a single vehicle:

GPS Insight Acceleration Histogram comparison

And last, you can click through in the “Avg” columns to get detailed data about where the acceleration/deceleration took place:

GPS Insight Acceleration Detail Report

Hovering your mouse over any address or location will then show you a map of that activity’s location.

In this case, I am accelerating very quickly to get onto the freeway from an on-ramp.

You can also (as always) export the locations to either a browser based map, Google Earth, or a spreadsheet, and scheduled the report to be sent to you automatically per your exact schedule.

With our GPSI-3900 and GPSI-4000 we will be adding more acceleration and deceleration capabilities, reports, and alerts, and will also support an accident “black box” functionality where if a significant G-force (e.g. accident) happens, we buffer and send the last 15 seconds of exact location/speed/acceleration/deceleration/direction information as well as the 15 seconds following the impact. This should be available later in the year, but purchasing a GPSI-3900 or 4000 will ensure you have that capability when it becomes available.

Thanks,

Rob.

Tags: Fleet Tracking, fleet tracking reports, GPS Tracking, gps tracking devices, gps tracking harsh braking, harsh braking, rapid acceleration, safety, truck tracking

Comments (0)

Apr 16 2011

Automating ‘I’m coming home’ messages to avoid calls while driving

Category: Alerts,Arizona,GPS Insight Employees,Landmarks,Safety — rdonat @ 11:15 am

Most days I leave work around 5:30-6:30 and call my wife to let her know I’ll be home in 10 minutes or so (nice commute, huh?).

I typically call her on Scottsdale Rd., which is busy, and it’s obviously distracting to do so. I shouldn’t be calling people while driving (nor should your drivers be).

I am finally just going to automate an email/text message to her which tells her I’m leaving the office between 4-7 so she’ll have a heads up (e.g. I can pick up a kid from baseball, get home in time to eat with everyone else, etc.).

You can do this for any landmark arrival/departure in an effort to make fewer calls and be proactive about telling someone you’re on your way/arrived/etc.

This is SUPER-EASY to do in 1 minute and may save me from getting into an accident or getting a ticket for talking on the phone while driving.

Here’s how you do this in GPS Insight:

Choose Account: Schedule: Alerts:

Open GPS Insight Alerts Admin Area

Add a Landmark Alert:

Add a Landmark Alert

Then customize the particulars:

Only my vehicle (Rob 4000)
My wife’s email AND cell phone (note this is a true SMS, not an email to an @txt.att.net, so you don’t need to know the carrier)
Only during weekdays between 4 PM and 10 PM
All day during the weekends (so she knows when I’m heading home all day Saturday/Sunday)
Only when I LEAVE (not enter) the landmark “GPS Insight Headquarters”

How to customize a Landmark Alert

Then it instantly starts checking, once per minute:

Alert is running now to notify my wife when I leave work automatically

Just to make sure the landmark definition includes where I would normally park, I’ll check that also:

Ensuring the landmark is accurate to where I park

Now when I leave, an automated text and email will go out to home, letting them know I’m on the way (e.g. save me some dinner…).

And I won’t need to be distracted on the road while heading home any longer.

Rob.

Here’s the first message, within a minute of me leaving the office:

"I'm Coming Home" Alert through GPS Insight

And the stop report to back it up:

Rob leaves the office at 5:35 and the alert is delivered at 5:36

Rob.

Tags: cell phone usage while driving, coming home alert, Fleet Tracking, GPS Tracking, landmark alert, safe driving, Vehicle Tracking

Comments (2)

Apr 15 2011

Do your drivers learn from their mistakes? Or keep making them?

Category: Fleet Tracking,Safety — rdonat @ 6:22 pm

I don’t drive a truck or service vehicle for a living, but I’m guessing my human nature isn’t much better or worse than most others… To include your drivers, who have ample opportunity during the day to get distracted, try to do too much at once, and get into near-misses… Only to do the same thing shortly thereafter.

So what does this picture of me with way too much to carry (taken by my uncomprehending son when I asked him to take it with my phone) have to do with your drivers?

Me trying to carry too much at once

I was walking from my kitchen to my outdoor grill yesterday. I had a can of ‘Pam’ under my arm, 2 pieces of fish in one hand, spice and a glass bottle of sea salt in my other hand.

I had to open the kid-proof pool door somehow rather than be smart and put something down.

What did I do?

Drop the glass full of sea salt onto the tile floor.

Almost a disaster, yes!

SOMEHOW, in a quarter second, I managed to kick it on its way down onto the carpet 2 feet away.

I averted disaster, or I would be sweeping up sea salt and glass for an hour (or in the case of your drivers doing too much at once, recovering from a crash).

What did I IMMEDIATELY DO AFTERWARD?

I picked the salt back up, put it in my hand with everything else, and stupidly opened the kid-proof door.

As I was doing it, I realized how ridiculously dumb that was, & how lucky I was 10 seconds prior not to have a nightmare on my hands.

Are your drivers learning their lessons after near-misses?

Do they get distracted, talk on the phone, speed, tailgate, slam on the brakes, and generally do other avoidable things which cause them near-misses with people or vehicles periodically? And do they learn their lessons from those experiences?

Can you COUNT on the fact that they do?

There so many technologies out there currently to MEASURE your drivers’ performance, and whether or not they learn from their mistakes. USE THEM! These proven technologies are grounded in logic and business-rules, not human nature and the unfortunate human inability to learn from one’s mistakes!

If you are running a big fleet, you should be looking into ALL AVAILABLE TECHNOLOGIES to help ensure you know when your drivers make mistakes, and that they correct their behavior when it is brought to their attention.

Here are a few examples of technologies which can help:

GPS Vehicle Tracking (speeding/acceleration/braking/odd-hours/posted-speed violations/geofence violations, excessive idling)
Cell Phone Usage Monitoring/ (texting or talking when driving)
In-Cab Camera Monitoring (impact detection/recording & acceleration/braking)
Driver Behavior Monitoring (seat belt usage, rapid acceleration/harsh braking)
Electronic Driver Logs (to ensure DOT compliance)

All of these technologies are readily available. They help you, the fleet manager/supervisor ensure that you know what is going on with your drivers, and whether or not they can be trusted to learn from their mistakes.

The downside of a catastrophic crash for your organization is clearly significant.

The amount of effort to implement technology to identify continually reckless drivers and reduce the risk of that crash is minimal, and all of these technologies have proven ROI and widespread adoption in all fleet industries.

Let technology help you coach your drivers and ensure they’re learning from their mistakes.

You’ll be safe, not sorry.

Rob.

Tags: drivers learning from their mistakes, Fleet Tracking, GPS Tracking, safety, Vehicle Tracking

Comments (0)

Feb 05 2011

New Garmin Canned Messages interface

Category: Company Efficiency,Garmin Integration,Garmin Messaging,GPS Navigation,New Features,New Garmin Features,Safety — rdonat @ 4:38 pm

We have recently given customers the ability to store “canned messages” on their drivers’ Garmin in the vehicle.

This allows them to choose from a list of commonly sent messages, rather than have to type each one out on the mini-keyboard on each Garmin.

Here’s how you do it:

Open the Garmin page:

Open the Garmin interface

Choose the Canned Messages tab and then create new messages, assign them to message groups, and assign those message groups to vehicles:

GPS Insight Garmin Canned Messages Interface

Create a message:

Create a Canned Message

Assign it to a group of messages:

Assign Garmin canned messages to groups

Then assign them to vehicles:

Assign message groups to vehicles

Then press “Sync Now” and your messages will be “pushed” to the appropriate vehicle’s Garmin.

To send one from your Garmin to dispatch, follow these steps:

Push Dispatch

Push Messages

Push "Quick Message"

Then up comes a list of “your” quick (canned) messages. Scroll through to select the one you want:

Choose a Canned Message

The Garmin will then prompt you if you want to send OR EDIT the canned message, so you can make small changes, such as add an amount, change a time, etc.

This definitely beats using the small on-screen keyboard to send free-form/ad-hoc messages:

Edit a canned message

Keyboard interface for editing a canned message

And here’s the message, in “red” to indicate it’s new and un-read. Once you click on it, it turns back to white:

Canned Message in the Garmin dashlet

This will help our customers enable their drivers to communicate more effectively, and help avoid the potential for distracted texting on their Garmin.

Rob.

Tags: gps fleet management software, gps fleet tracking, gps garmin integration, gps insight garmin tracking, GPS Tracking, gps tracking devices, gps vehicle tracking

Comments (0)

Nov 26 2010

GPS Insight introduces new remote panic switch capability

Category: Alerts,New Features,New Features,Safety,Switches — rdonat @ 12:04 pm

We had a customer who needed to allow their drivers to remotely trigger a panic alarm which would go to their dispatch/safety personnel instantly.

We found a good hardware vendor for the wireless keyfob component, and programmed the necessary parts to make this work with our existing panic alerts.

Here is the hardware:

GPS Insight introduces wireless panic switches

This is a $50 one time hardware option which includes the wireless keyfobs (2), receiver, and a bright LED to let anyone in the vehicle know that the panic switch has been turned “on.”

It can be canceled by pressing the “off” button on the keyfob.

This new option is available immediately, and the service is a free upgrade.

Rob.

Tags: Alerts, automated vehicle tracking, Fleet Tracking, fleet tracking software, gps fleet tracking, GPS Tracking, gps tracking trucks, gps vehicle tracking, remote panic switch, Vehicle Tracking

Comments (0)

Nov 15 2010

$3 million legal verdict for not having GPS tracking

Category: detecting unauthorized vehicle usage,Extreme Return on Investment,Fleet Tracking,Google Earth,Mapping,Reports,Safety — rdonat @ 2:01 pm

Well, to be accurate, if St. Louis had installed GPS in its vehicles, might not have lost a recent $3 million verdict in court.

Here’s the story:

A jury ordered St. Louis $3 MILLION to a woman who claims a municipal truck cut her off and led to a single vehicle crash.

She did not have any evidence about the vehicle, department, or employee other than the fact that “a municipal truck caused her to swerve and avoid a collision.”

The crash time and location were certainly determinable.

If St. Louis had GPS on its vehicles, it would be trivial to determine if (and/or who) was the truck in question.

You could run a landmark report for a 2 mile area around the crash location at the exact time (20 minutes between 14:50 and 15:10 near the landmark called “Mesa Riverview” in this example):

Check to see if any vehicles were near the accident at that time

We quickly see there was no activity:

No activity near the crash at that time

Then you can pull the entire day to see if ANY vehicles went nearby that landmark, and when:

Pull the full day's history into a map

Zooming in on our “pretend crash” landmark, we see that that there was NO ACTIVITY for that day, & the closest to that landmark was the “Scion” at 10:03 driving by on the freeway, and “Adam 4000″ at 12:20 several roads away from the incident.

Conclusive proof no city vehicle caused the accident

Now it’s entirely possible that the vehicle DID in fact cause the accident — however, right now it is the word of an unfortunate accident victim against the City — and apparently that word is worth $3,000,000.

That $3,000,000 would buy a city of 1,500 vehicles GPS Tracking for every vehicle for 5 years based on my calculations.

Plus they would have the benefits of GPS Tracking instead of just a way to avoid a jury verdict. And maybe if the drivers knew they were being tracked, the accident wouldn’t have occurred in the first place if it was in fact caused by a city worker.

Rob.

Tags: $3M jury verdict, avl tracking, Fleet Tracking, fleet tracking software, gps fleet tracking, GPS Tracking, gps vehicle tracking, tracking hardware, vehicle accountability, Vehicle Tracking, vehicle tracking device

Comments (1)

Feb 02 2010

HUGE safety addition to GPS Insight — the Speed Summary Report

Category: Driver Accountability,Identifying and eliminating speeding,New Features,Reporting,Reports,Safety — rdonat @ 6:24 pm

This new report shows the speeding and “slow-poke” tendencies of your individual drivers.

It can be run for a month at a time, and is available here (we are running the report for just the OKL group for the month of January):

Launching the GPS Insight Speed Summary report

Here is the part which allows you to rank by any of the major columns (click on the column heading) and you can see that OKL-69633-Service-Jasoncb is the top speeder on average. This is relative to the speed limit ONLY when he is exceeding the speed limit.

Ranking your speeders using GPS Insight's new Speed Summary Report

Conversely, you can click on “Laggard Avg” which will give you the top “slow-poke” (tie between the Manager and Chadc). This is ONLY when the driver is going LESS than the posted speed limit.

This is useful because both activities are undesirable. Padding hours by going slow is just as bad as being reckless and wasting fuel by speeding.

Clicking on any of the “at a glance” graphs to the right brings up a graph which compares a single driver’s speeding profile to the the entire group:

Graphically showing differences between a driver and the group average

This is the 4th in a series of enhancements to our speeding reports and graphs.

Since occasional discrepancies between GPS Insight’s data and actual posted speed limits occur, we have found it much more useful to run on a month-by-month “Macro” level to indicate undeniable trends in speeding.

Future enhancements will include posted speed limit alerts, group-by-group comparisons of speeding/lagging trends, and historical comparisons to prove that progress has been made in improving efficiency and curbing speeding using GPS Insight reports and alerts. Additionally, certain fields within these reports will launch supporting reports (e.g. a speeding report for just that single vehicle, to include violations on a map, etc.). Rapid acceleration and deceleration will be detected and reported upon for certain GPS Insight devices (notably the GO-3000 and GPSI-4000).

This report is available for all customers immediately, and currently has data going back to December 2009. We will add support for earlier months as we add functionality.

Click for information on the other reports we offer.

Thanks,
Rob.

Tags: gps fleet tracking, GPS Tracking, gps vehicle tracking

Comments (0)