| | March 20218raditionally, businesses in-volving vehicles whether transportation of man or goods, incurred heavy staff and maintenance costs. The high ratio of people to physical assets was making it difficult for businesses to scale profitably. There was a dire need to make the businesses asset light. There was very little to ensure predic-tive maintenance of vehicles or safety of drivers. Also, it was seen that manual maintenance led to lot of fraud and theft which raised security concerns. Thus, overall cost of running such businesses became unreasonable. Following 3 pillars became the focus of improvement in Fleet management:1. Reducing asset Cost Structure2. Increasing the Life/Health of Fleet3. Ensuring safety and mitigating riskWith the advancement of technology and invention of fleet telematics, all the 3 became possible. The world's biggest /most innovative companies (e.g. Uber, Tesla, Google, Zoomcar etc) are now using similar technol-ogy to manage their fleet. Let's deep dive into how does fleet telematics work and how is vehicle and driver safety ensured using this data.Components of Fleet Telematics:1. GPS Tracking: The most basic functions in all fleet management systems, is the vehicle tracking component. This component is usually GPS-based, but sometimes it can be based on GLONASS or a cellular triangulation platform. Once vehicle location, direction and speed are determined from the GPS components, additional tracking capabilities transmit this information to a fleet management software application. Satellite tracking communications help to track vehicle in remote environments with-out interruption. Users can see actual, real-time locations of their fleet on a map. This is often used to quickly respond on events in the field.2. OBD (On Board Diagnostics): This refers to vehicle's self-diagnostic and reporting ca-pability. Initially it was used only by professionals and hobbyists to repair vehicles. Nowadays, OBD informa-tion is commonly used by vehicle telematics devices that perform fleet tracking, monitor fuel efficiency, prevent unsafe driving, as well as for remote diagnostics and by pay-as-you-drive insurance. Although originally not in-tended for the above purposes, commonly supported OBD II data such as vehicle speed, RPM, and fuel level allow GPS-based fleet tracking devices to monitor vehi-cle idling times, speeding, and over-revving. The OBD device reads the data in binary format through voltage fluctuations from the sensors and the same is transmit-ted remotely using cellular network or Wi-Fi. Analysing Driver Behaviour using Vehicle Telematics: Road traffic injuries are among serious concerns in emerging economies. Their death toll and economic im-pact are shocking, with 9 out of 10 deaths occurring in low or middle-income countries; and road traffic crashes representing 3 percent of their gross domestic product. One way to mitigate these issues is to devel-op technology to effectively assist the driver, perhaps making him more aware about how her (his) decisions influence safety. FLEET TELEMATICS AND DRIVER MANAGEMENTBy Arpit Agarwal, Associate Director - Data Science, ZoomcarT IN MY OPINIONArpit AgarwalZoomcar is one of India's largest self drive urban mobility platforms. Zoomcar has a presence in 27 cities with a fleet of over 3,000 vehicles and 20+ models while PEDL is operational across 6 cities with more than 3,000 cycles.
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