Most commonly, commercial vehicles get into an accident when backing up and inadvertently striking another vehicle, changing lanes, or making a difficult right turn. More serious crashes often involve lane changes or intersection collisions. According to the FMCSA, almost 500,000 crashes involving large trucks occur annually. Also from distracted driving behavior in 2016, approximately 3,500 people were killed in car crashes, there are many factors that contribute to distracted driving, we know that cell phone use continues to top the list: in fact, half of the drivers recently reported talking on a hand-held phone while driving—and nearly 35 percent have sent a text or email—despite knowing that cell phone use can be a crash risk.
To understand what caused the crash and to help the crash investigation, you need to capture and preserve the scene as quickly and accurately as possible, with details like collision analysis, speed analysis, crash scene mapping, and computer-aided drawing programs to simulate. This is why a fleet manager should opt for green driving feature with accident reconstruction ability in fleet management software, which virtually eliminates the guesswork by letting actually see what took place both inside and outside of the fleet along with other aspects of the investigation to determine what happened in a vehicle accident when it is impossible to rely on eyewitness accounts. Read also: Benefits of Accident Reconstruction in Fleet Management
When a Fleet is involved in an Accident:
Fleet managers will have the difficult task of accident reconstruction. Managing the aftermath of a road traffic accident or damage to a company vehicle can be a frustrating and time-consuming affair. And having drivers off the road for an unnecessary length of time can be expensive.
Usually, law enforcement officers rush to the site of the incident, ready to reconstruct the crash or crime scene. Human memory is notoriously unreliable, and going through something as traumatic as a vehicle accident can cause a driver's mind and memory to be unclear. Read further: Telecom Companies foray into Telematics to Drive Revenue
Role of Telematics in Accident Reconstruction:
Telematics can provide a variety of informative data on vehicle activity before, during, and after the accident occurred. This information can be downloaded and used to establish how and why a vehicle accident happened as well as who was really responsible for the crash. Knowing when to fight a lawsuit and knowing when to settle quickly reduces the overall time and expense of inevitable vehicle accidents. For instance, if there was a claim against a driver but the driver denies that they were part of the accident, telematics data can provide details as to where the vehicle was at that point in time. Explore more about the Future of Insurance Telematics in the UK?
This sophisticated telematics system provides data covering several factors – including the speed, braking, steering, cornering rate, and g-force of the vehicle. The information provided can prove vital data during an insurance claim. Accident data reconstruction is rarely touched upon by many of the market’s fleet management systems. This post will show you how telematics data can help to reconstruct a vehicle accident to learn more about what happened. Read also: Tata AIG India Launches Telematics-Based App for 'Pay-As-You-Drive Coverage
What Is Accident Reconstruction?:
Accident/ Crash reconstruction is a process of recalling the sequence of collision events using vehicle telematics data before, during, and after a collision to analyze how and why an accident occurred. Read also: Essentials of Accident Reconstruction in Fleet Management
Importance of Accident Reconstruction:
Accident reconstruction is an important part of the rollout for our next generation of fleet management. Telematics gives scientific and exact data of crash sequence which is remarkably essential to determine the crash event. One of the main reasons to use a telematics solution is to track infractions that are indicative of risky driving behavior which can help you identify your fleet’s riskiest drivers. It provides different types of data about before, during & after the crash event like accelerometer (harsh acceleration, braking & cornering), speed events, trip history (date, time, location, etc.), and RPM. Understand more about the different ways of optimizing your fleet's life cycle.
How does it Work?: (Stepwise)
An active eco-driving feature with accelerometer auto-calibration of telematics device installed in your fleet will be utilized to identify accelerate, brake, or corner events.
By monitoring acceleration on each axis (X, Y, & Z) of your fleet will help to detect an accident.
When a crash happens alerts will be sent out almost instantaneously after a crash occurs. Fleet managers will able to view any crash detection alerts within the safety profiles of individual drivers.
Threshold and duration value are set in G-force based value depending on an impact to a vehicle that is required to detect. Telematics devices can capture events from a small tap on the device to a critical crash.
The device can also send other driver behavior alerts like speeding, harsh accelerations, decelerations, and idling. In order for a crash detection alert to occur, the change in G-force must meet a threshold of 2.5g or greater.
The telematics devices will gather crash trace data depending on the frequency specified while configuring the device and trace data will be sent to the server.
This technology brings a new level of transparency and simplicity to the litigation process as it pertains to deciding who was in the wrong. Know: What is Google Earth Pro?
By monitoring this type of data fleet manager will get granularity details of crash event & driving behavior of their drivers to identify where the problem areas in their fleet or determine who is responsible for such incident and target them in order to take action whether he should consult a lawsuit or to provide the necessary training to improve the safety of their driver and fleet. Find out more about the Top 6 trends in green driving habits for your fleet.
What Data Do Telematics Track for Accident Reconstruction?:
1. Accelerometer:
2. Green Driving Functionality:
3. Trip History with Location:
1. Accelerometer:
Acceleration, braking, and cornering all are measured by an onboard accelerometer in telematics. An accelerometer is a sensor that builds by an axis-based movement detector to measure the physical acceleration & orientation experienced in a 3-axis format, including forwarding/ backward, sides, and up and down movement.
As a speedometer is a meter to measures speed, an accelerometer is a meter to measure acceleration. An ability of an accelerometer to sense acceleration can be put to use to measure a variety of things like tilt, vibration, rotation, collision, gravity, etc.
The accelerometer’s sensitivity is very high as it’s capable to gauge acceleration value in every bit of minute. More sensitivity of the accelerometer is easier to measure acceleration. This useful, graphical representation of engine & acceleration data can then be used by accident reconstruction experts in revision with data collected from the accident site as well as GPS data to learn about the accident. Read also: How Does Software Which Handles Fleet Management Assist In Monitoring Vehicle Speed?
2. Green Driving Functionality:
Green Driving/ Eco Driving functionality generates events in 3 cases if the specified value exceeds the defined parameter value of acceleration, braking, & cornering. Green driving analyzes acceleration, braking & cornering values until the current value is below the set parameter value. The systems retain the data and can help recreate the moments before an accident. Telematics can let you know how fast your drivers are going at all times and are instrumental in preventing excessive speeding. Read What is Green Driving and How Does it Affect Fleet Management?
3. Trip History with Location:
Telematics will capture the date, time, and location of the crash event on the map to provide accurate data about the crash event, like whether it occurred at traffic congestion or parking place. Read also about the 8 Benefits of Going Paperless in Fleet Management
Conclusion:
By utilizing only a telematics solution, data alone can’t decrease collision for your vehicles. It requires the coordination of fleet manager and driver along with safety compliance’s advice and the company’s safety rules. Telematics can pinpoint the trends in driver behavior better than any other method, like which driver takes the same risks over and over again that lead to more accidents. Monitoring this data of your driver behaviors helps to identify signs of accident risks and use them to improve risky driving behavior by providing the necessary training or coaching, which helps fleet managers to decrease their fleet’s crash ratio.
Contact us for a quick demo of our Traxroot Accident Reconstruction Solution to understand how our software using GPS systems can protect you and your companies vehicles by providing details like speed, braking, steering, cornering rate, and g-force of the vehicle, distance traveled, live speed, driving patterns, generates fuel-saving reports, nighttime driving, acceleration, fuel slippage, and many other exciting features. We will love to help you out regarding Accident Reconstruction. Visit our Solution page.