All businesses strive to stay ahead of their competitors and technology can help them to do it. The use of effective software and using automation for your business can help you to market more effectively, increase the speed of development cycles, improve customer satisfaction levels, and enhance your productivity and profitability. As a fleet manager, one way you can benefit from technology is to install dash cams across your entire fleet. But you’ll only get full advantage if you choose carefully and install and use correctly.
The Benefits of Installing Dash Cams
Dash cams can view and record incidents inside and outside a vehicle. Consequently, they are an invaluable investment for any fleet, whatever its size and the type of vehicles, because they:
- Identify cash for crash insurance scams and prevent fraudulent claims
- Improve driver behavior and so increase roads safety
- Check the performance of new drivers
- Enable good driving habits, which improves fuel efficiency and vehicle performance, to be rewarded
- Reduce insurance claims and so make insurance premiums cheaper
Average insurance claims can be much higher for companies where vehicles have no cameras compared to those that do. Additionally, when a vehicle is off the road, you’re losing business so dash cam usage will provide a real return on your investment.
Choosing the Best Type of Dash Cam
Dash cams are of two basic types:
- SD card-based versions where all footage is stored on an SD card within the device. These tend to be much cheaper but they’re limited by the size of the SD card so there has to be a choice between recording a full trip at low quality or only parts of the trip at best quality. Any incidents have to be investigated by downloading data from the card, which can lead to delays.
- Network connected (or wireless) dash cams use the mobile phone network to upload data to the cloud and so can record unlimited footage in high definition. This data is totally secure, instantly available and can give immediate warning of incidents, whether of risky driver behavior or an accident, so you can take prompt action.
You need to select dash cams that are suitable for your business so you should also consider:
- Whether facing the road for driving incidents or into the cab to check driver behavior.
- Dual-facing cameras are available to cover both aspects plus external reversing cameras to aid maneuvers.
- The quality, since dash cams need to work reliably, possibly in harsh conditions, and record high quality footage that gives a clear picture.
- Whether you need audio as well as video recording.
- How easy the system is to install and use since you can’t afford interruptions in operations and additional work for staff.
- Whether the system is managed by the provider or can be self-managed.
- The type of information that is provided, including GPS tracking data, speed of vehicle and driver behavior.
- Whether the data can integrate with other systems.
A proper dash cam system will improve the performance of your fleet while other technology can benefit various areas of your business.
