DHL

CASE STUDY: AI & Video Telematics

ABOUT

AI & Video based telematics solutions address critical challenges in various industries by combining video recording technology with telematics data and automating it with the use of AI. These systems are essential for enhancing safety and minimizing risks associated with fleet management. By monitoring driver behaviour through video analytics, organizations can identify and rectify unsafe practices, leading to a reduction in accidents and improved road safety. The recorded footage serves as valuable evidence for incident reconstruction, aiding in insurance claims and mitigating liability. Additionally, video telematics contribute to operational efficiency by optimizing routes, promoting fuel savings, and facilitating proactive vehicle maintenance. The real-time monitoring and alert features offer instant notifications for events like rash or negligent driving, enabling prompt intervention to address issues and prevent potential risks.

Furthermore, video telematics solutions play a pivotal role in compliance management, ensuring adherence to industry regulations and standards. The technology also supports driver training initiatives, allowing organizations to provide targeted coaching based on performance data. This not only enhances the skills of drivers but also contributes to long-term safety improvements. Overall, video telematics solutions provide a comprehensive and integrated approach to fleet management, offering benefits such as insurance cost reduction, enhanced security, and streamlined operations, making them indispensable tools for organizations seeking to optimize their transportation and logistics processes.

INDIA

India, with its vast geography, terrain, and an expanding road infrastructure, has a need for solutions that help manage and address challenges that affect businesses in the transportation, logistics, construction and other similar services.

GPS based tracking devices, now a regulatory mandate for commercial vehicles, are widely available and used. The information captured by these telematics devices provide effective data points that help organizations identify driving patterns, track vehicles and gather vehicle specific data and metrics.

With market maturity, early adopters are keenly exploring solutions that are more sophisticated and provide tangible information that not only provides insights to driver and vehicle metrics but can also address and change driver behaviour in a positive way.
There are about 5 lakhs road accidents every year in India and 78% of those accidents are caused due to driver’s fault. Top causes of these accidents include and are not limited to the following:

• Over-Speeding
• Driving under influence
• Driving discipline – Wrong side, overtaking, lane switching
• Jumping red light
• Use of mobile phone
• Failure to wear a seatbelt

Source: Ministry of Road Transport and Highways.https://morth.nic.in/sites/default/files/RA_2021_Compressed.pdf

One aspect of the AI and Video Telematics solutions aims to touch on the above accident reasons by warning drivers, capturing event videos for driver training, and use recorded video as reference for managing operations, verifying incidents, evidence for insurance claims, etc.

DHL ENGAGEMENT

DHL India’s requirement primarily stemmed with the focus on Driver Safety and extension of company rules and policies to partners. As an organization, DHL has a company-wide policy on ensuring safety & security of not only its employees but also contractors and partners engaged with the company.

The decision for choosing the right partner for the telematics solution was based on several reasons and evaluation criteria. The key ones that differentiated ‘ZigFleet – AI & Video Telematics solution’, from the rest included

1. Compliances to different scenarios outlined and flexibility to add newer scenarios in the future
2. Structure the AI model to Indian road infrastructure and conditions.
3. Planned roadmap of services such as Digital Twin, Driver Coaching, etc.

CHALLENGES

Introduction of any new product that directly impacts the driver behaviour, driving pattern and influences change, has its challenges.

During implementation of ZigFleet, there were challenges that came in at different times, and some continue to be today too. These sets are applicable industry wide and not unique to this engagement alone.

• Hardware tampering: With the cameras in the vehicle cabin, the drivers felt intrusive of personal space. That leads to frequent issues of camera being turned away, removed, damaged or missing. User acceptance is crucial for the successful long-term implementation of these solutions.
• Road & Driving conditions: The road and driving conditions in India is not systematic and organized. Driver cabin conditions, low-light, jaywalking, wrong way driving, missing lane markings & more, all created a challenge for event detection and alerts for the driver. Furthermore, minor tweaks in road layout and traffic signals from city to city led to increase in false positive events for inter-state trips.
• Hardware limitation: After-market solutions have a limitation on the capability of the hardware. E.g. extreme environmental conditions, such as adverse weather or low-light situations. There needs to be a balance between cost vs benefit. Expectations like the examples listed above, requires a hardware with high specs, which directly translates to cost negating the value that the product offers.

The Solution

In line with the challenges faced, specific actions were taken to overcome them –

1. To address hardware tampering, two key approaches were taken (1) AI and sensor data was used to detect changes to camera angles, loss of power & connectivity to hardware (2) Proactively educating the drivers that the cameras were installed to enhance their safety and not to penalize, resulting in reduction of related issues.
2. A customizable AI Model was used to cater to local traffic conditions and geographical requirements. Periodic updates were planned to tune the AI model to accommodate new unforeseen scenarios, thereby significantly reducing false positives.
3. A right combination of hardware was used to ensure effectiveness of solution. Separate hardware components helped to (1) Allow for future expansion of sensors or storage (2) swapping of specific component as part of warranty and service, rather than the whole integrated unit (3) A separate speaker ensured a louder output in a noisy cabin.

THE RESULTS

Through continuous education and periodic safety briefings of the drivers, DHL was able to bring down the number of violations across categories over a period. Some of these incidents include –

• Driver camera blocked
  

• Driver Smoking
  

• No Seat Belt
  

• Wrong Way Driving
  

• Illegal overtaking
  

CUSTOMER TESTIMONIALS

“Our company takes safety of the driver very seriously. In case of an unfortunate incident that impacts the driver, a thorough investigation is carried out where each member involved in scheduling and facilitating the journey must submit details as part of the inquiry. The investigation report is to ensure that safety processes are strictly followed and if need be, altered, to avoid future lapses. The AI & video telematics solutions helped to not only alert the driver, but the videos also support driver’s perspective.” – [DHL Representative]
“With the launch of the solution we saw a spike in the driver violations to company policies and traffic rules, an insight that could not be otherwise validated. The violation videos were made part of the driver de-briefing after every trip completion. The videos also gave inputs into certain difficulties that the drivers faced, and changes were implemented towards better driving conditions.” – [DHL Representative]

CONCLUSION

Today, with close to 100 vehicles installed, DHL is now tracking driver behaviour; and top drivers are awarded. This also works as an incentive for others to drive better, which helps in their own safety and also maintenance of the vehicle.

OmniEyes has helped DHL with information that they had no visibility to. DHL now has insights to details about drivers, their habits, patterns, and related reasons, leading to help DHL solve for issues that may be impacting the driver’s work environment. Lack of evidence often leads to trust factor, and video recordings help in bridging the gap providing credible information.

In other markets too, AI & Video telematics solutions have had a significant impact in first identifying the events, and later reducing these events, benefiting all involved users. With the implementation at DHL being recent, the expectation is to replicate the same success once the project deployment is complete.