Weigh station bypass solution provider Drivewyze is now offering free in-cab safety alerts to every trucker on the road.
The technology company that offers safety and productivity solutions for fleets, drivers, and transportation agencies recently announced Drivewyze Free during the Transportation Research Board annual meeting in Washington, D.C. Drivewyze Free allows fleet owners and drivers to receive in-cab safety alerts in advance of potentially risky areas on the road. These alerts include risks such as low bridges, rest area parking updates, and mountain alerts, such as upcoming steep grades, chain-up and brake check stations, and runaway ramps.
“Drivewyze Free is this breakthrough where we’re delivering these essential safety messages to drivers,” Brian Heath, founder and CEO of Drivewyze, told FleetOwner. “We’ll give that driver a notice in real time to be aware of this hazard in front, which gives a truck driver the opportunity to respond in time.”
Although Drivewyze Free is powered by the Drivewyze platform, a paid subscription to the platform is not required; fleets and drivers who are not currently subscribers of the Drivewyze PreClear weigh station bypass service or the Drivewyze coaching platform, Safety+, can take complete advantage of these alerts. Drivewyze Free’s in-cab alerts are free for fleets and drivers.
Industry visibility with agency partnerships and Drivewyze data
A key benefit of Drivewyze Free is that it provides drivers with alerts based on data from telematics providers as well as local and state government agencies.
“Drivewyze is at the nexus of the transportation network and fleet vehicles themselves to improve safety and sustainability for trucking,” Heath said.
Martin Murtland, VP of product at Drivewyze, expanded on that. “We have a unique position in the marketplace where we are connected to different sides: with the (government and transportation) agencies, with the fleets, with the technology providers.”
This position gives Drivewyze visibility into what’s happening on the roads in real-time, and enabling in-cab safety notifications to all truck drivers for free supports the company’s mission to have “zero crashes, zero fatalities across the national network of highways,” Mutland told FleetOwner.
Drivewyze Free offers drivers two types of safety messages: Drivewyze-sponsored and agency-sponsored messages. The agency-sponsored messages are those that local and state agencies (such as Departments of Transportation) send, including traffic slowdowns and crash sites ahead. Drivewyze has partnered with state agencies in New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Georgia, Delaware, Connecticut, Ohio, Texas, Arkansas, and Virginia.
The Drivewyze-sponsored messages include Low Bridge alerts, which Murtland said account for 15,000 trucking incidents annually. Murtland also said that before using Drivewyze services, one customer’s fleet encountered a bridge strike almost every few weeks. After implementing Drivewyze alerts, these bridge strikes are “near enough down to zero,” Murtland said.
Additionally, Drivewyze sends alerts for areas with high rollover risk and where tight curve incidents might occur. Vehicle rollover events make up 53% of large truck occupant deaths, Murtland said, and Drivewyze data proves truck drivers will slow their speed by 7 mph on average after receiving a Rollover Risk alert. This helps them make a turn safely and avoid an accident.
Another Drivewyze-sponsored alert is for upcoming steep gradients. “DOTs do a great job of educating (local truck drivers), so they know where these steep gradients are, where the safety buffer zones are, and where they should go,” Murtland explained. But out-of-state drivers don’t always have access to this information. “We want to give (out-of-state drivers) the knowledge of a local driver.”
Drivewyze also alerts drivers with Rest Area updates, such as available parking spots. Fleet owners can choose to silence this notification for drivers that remain local.
Establishing trust through accurate alerts
The folks at Drivewyze understood that safety alerts should be reliable and not a nuisance that drivers ignore. To establish this reliability, Heath said Drivewyze’s partnerships with government agencies, along with Drivewyze’s data collected through sensors, probes, and GPS, ensure reliable, verified, and accurate alerts.
“Our job is to ensure that the quality of that data is high enough so that when a driver sees a safety compliance message from their Drivewyze application, they trust it,” Heath told FleetOwner.
The Drivewyze Free system also won’t distract when not in use. The system requires no driver interaction, and the driver only sees alerts when there is a risk ahead. Once the driver is alerted, Drivewyze Free “drops back into the background,” Heath said.
Audible and visual alerts are displayed on the driver’s mobile device, tablet, ELD, or telematics device.
“The iconology (used to alert the driver) is easily recognizable for the drivers of what it is,” Murtland said. “We’re very cognizant of how the information is communicated. We work very hard on that and how (drivers) need to be able to react, so we don’t want to distract them. We want to get that information to them very quickly and easily.”
Aside from Drivewyze Free safety alerts, the system also has additional fleet management components accessible by managers and owners called the Drivewyze Hub. This hub is where managers can go to customize alerts, such as silencing Rest Area updates, and manage Drivewyze access for the driver. The hub also includes driver reporting to help the manager understand and see the benefits of Drivewyze Free in terms of speed reduction and other safety incidents.
Fleet owners, managers, and drivers can access these free safety alerts from Drivewyze Free by simply signing up on the Drivewyze website.
“It's always been really difficult to communicate across the industry with drivers,” Heath said. “Drivewyze is a one-to-many connection in that world, and it allows us to deliver these services, not just to one hardware platform or to one fleet, but across the industry. When we looked at ... the greatest impact we can have on safety, it’s packaging Drivewyze Free so that anyone in the industry—any driver, any fleet—can implement it. It's data that hasn't been available to these drivers before.”
