The Case for Cameras

Welcome to CSA Basics.

CSA Basics.

The podcast where we talk about all things related to safety, compliance, and insurance for the trucking industry. We're here to help you save money, save time, and save lives. Now, here's your host, CEO of Carrier Risk Solutions, Sam Tucker.

All right, welcome back to the CSA Basics Podcast. I'm your host, Sam Tucker, and today we're gonna be talking about the case for cameras. Now, what I mean by that is I think, or I feel strongly, that every truck in the US should have an onboard video event recorder or camera or whatever you want to call it installed in the cabs. This could be front-facing, meaning road-facing cameras. This could also mean rear-facing and forward-facing cameras, or in case of some systems, they have rear-facing, forward-facing, and even some attached to the sides to be able to check out the sides of the trucks, you know, kind of looking back as a rearview type situation. Now, there are many different arguments both for and against having cameras in the trucks, and I want to go through each of them today, chat a little bit about it, and then talk a little bit about what you should look for in a camera system. All right, to get started, I wanted to go through the 3 top reasons I think all fleets should have cameras in the trucks. The first one would be safety improvement. The second would be crash exoneration, and the third would be cheaper insurance premiums. So if you take a look at each of these 3, it's hard to say which one's most important, but let's just start off with safety improvement. So everybody could probably use better CSA basic scores. There's just no two ways about it. Decreasing roadside inspections and keeping your CSA scores low just help benefit the entire fleet in a number of different ways. So if you want to be able to decrease those unsafe driving behaviors, sometimes before they even get good and implanted into some drivers, what you really want to do is be able to see what the driver's seeing. You also want to be able to see the driver and in a lot of cases too. And being able to do that can help prevent those types of unsafe driving behaviors that take hold and can be really hard to get rid of. For instance, we have a client down in Tampa running about 60 power units, just doing general commodity hauling. They have great CSA scores. You know, their CSA scores look good. They thought previously they didn't really have any kind of issue with any kind of unsafe driving behaviors. Their CSA scores for unsafe driving were good. They didn't typically have any kind of reports or complaints from any other, road users or anything else. So they weren't really fully aware of the situation. So what happened was at the beginning of this year, we started handling their camera program for them. So we use, in this case, Lytx. So what we do is we actually go through when an event is triggered and we'll go through and evaluate that event and determine if there's any driver coaching needed. So with that, one of the main things we found with each of the drivers or with a number of the drivers are seatbelt issues, Probably primarily. And then secondly, a lot of handheld cell phone use. So those are the 2 main things that we've seen, especially with that rear-facing camera in the truck. But some other cool things, or I say not really cool necessarily, I guess is the best word, but some interesting things that we found are things like drivers falling asleep behind the wheel where we wouldn't previously had any idea. And we've even had some, at least 2 situations where we've had driver exonerations for that. And we'll talk about that again in a couple minutes. But again, it's just something where Mm-hmm. The client felt like they had no issues really with their drivers acting in an unsafe manner, but we've actually been able to go in and reduce their cell phone use in the cabs by 46%. And we've also helped them reduce their seatbelt use, or I guess improve their seatbelt use to almost 100% compliance. So there's a lot to be said for being able to improve the actual safety and decreasing those unsafe driving behaviors. Another really interesting phenomenon that a lot of carriers who've installed cameras in their trucks have found is that even though you may not see any kind of Even though you may not see a real de facto decrease in unsafe driving behaviors, be it stop sign violations or any kind of seatbelt use violations or anything like that, even though you may not see a decrease in those, you'll see increased compliance or decreased amounts of crashes simply because the drivers see or know that they're being watched or that what they're doing is being watched. And especially as part of the coaching program that you have with the system, if you come in and coach them effectively, they'll know that you're paying attention. And the fact that you're paying attention speaks real volumes for how you're actually treating the drivers and what the expectations are from acting like a professional on the road. All right, the second reason I think that cameras should be installed in all trucks are for crash exoneration. Now, we all know that probably 70 to 80% of all crashes with trucks involved are usually caused by the four-wheelers themselves, or personal vehicles if you want to be technical. Now, what this means to everybody is that There's a lot of crashes happening out there that are getting pinned on large trucks or blamed on large trucks simply because they're large trucks. You can talk for hours probably about the negative perceptions of the industry and the market to just the general motorist public and the different reasons for that. We could talk for probably another hour or so about nuclear verdicts and how those have been increased, or verdicts from juries have been increased over the years because of these things. Especially that negative perception. But what we need, and why I think this is so critically important, is because there isn't another tool like it that we can put in trucks that we can use and use as a tool to be able to help exonerate our drivers and exonerate our companies from these crashes. Now, while it's true that all drivers obviously won't be exonerated, what we will know by having cameras in the trucks or having that video footage of the event that happens is we'll know pretty quickly what the situation is, who caused it, what the contributing factors may have been, and have a better understanding of how to proceed Especially on a claim situation. So having that crash exoneration, the ability to see what happens at the time of a crash event or an incident, really gives us the opportunity to go and see, okay, this is what the driver saw. And then sometimes even with the rear-facing cameras, seeing what the driver was doing immediately before and during the event. So not only will that help us coach them and prevent crashes from happening in the future, but that could also help increase or improve the outcomes of our claims as well. All right, the third reason I think you should put cameras in your trucks is for cheaper insurance. So I'm sure like everyone else, you've experienced over the last few years a huge increase in all your expenses, pretty much everything from fuel to truck parts, anything you pretty much name has been increasingly expensive. With that, obviously truck insurance has been no exception, and that's a huge variable expense that a lot of people don't realize is actually variable. You have a lot of control over what your truck insurance costs are. And one way you can help reduce those costs is to install cameras in your trucks. Now, we've had clients that have installed cameras in the trucks or have been taking parts of some of these new insurance industry programs that offer discounts or serious different kinds of rating because they installed the cameras in the trucks. So we've seen with that sometimes between a 15 to even 80, 85% reduction in preventable crashes and incidents Within even probably 6 to 12 months of installing cameras in their, in all their trucks. So it can be a huge deal in terms of reducing the number of crashes that your drivers are gonna be involved in. Kind of like we were talking about in, in point number 1 in safety improvement category, definitely having the ability to have eyes on the driver and have eyes on what they're seeing. It gives them the understanding that, hey, you're in there with me. Now, a lot of the drivers will push back, obviously, and this is probably the primary consideration that they have.

Mm-hmm.

Is that they hate the Big Brother aspect of having cameras on them when they're doing their job, when they're out there driving. So that's obviously a huge concern and something that you'll wanna take a look at when you're going into the thought process about installing cameras and having the ability to communicate with the drivers effectively, get their buy-in, and have a really good ongoing conversation with them before you decide to do this is of critical importance. So a huge part of the whole getting cheaper insurance is installing cameras. Now, I know there's a number of other different ways to get your insurance premiums lower, but especially, you know, take a look at the underwriting landscape out there. It's a lot easier to see that even within the next probably 4 to 5 years, or certainly the next 10 years, that the situation we find ourselves in currently where it's a good thing, I mean, you actually get kind of a discount, either it's, you know, de facto simply written out discount, or if it's just in the underwriter's mind saying, hey, I understand this is gonna be a better risk because they have cameras in the trucks. You know, either of those things, whichever it is, doesn't really matter, but you're actually looked at as a better risk because you're having those cameras in the trucks. Now, fast forward 5 to 10 years from now, and we're gonna be talking about a different situation. In that time, we're probably gonna be looking at having cameras in the trucks as being almost kind of mandatory. If it's not actually spelled out as being physically mandatory, it's just the expectation that All cameras or all trucks have cameras in them. So you have a really good opportunity now to get ahead of that curve, to show the carriers, the insurance carriers, that is, that you have, you know, a huge impact on safety and, and wanna impact safety, improve your compliance and lower your crash rates. And obviously with that lower reduction in crashes will naturally give you better opportunities to have cheaper insurance. But also too, the other kind of flip side of that is The claims staff on the insurance company side will have the ability to understand, like we were talking about in the second point about crash exoneration, they'll know pretty quickly what the situation is, more likely who's at fault than not in most situations pretty quickly, and be able to figure out how they're going to proceed with the settlement of that claim. So if the driver was at fault, it's pretty clear up front. You know, generally speaking, we can see exactly what happened. And from a claims standpoint, that claims adjuster can go in and take a look and say, okay, I know what the situation is. And from there, we can go and say, okay, we're gonna take this route because we understand that our driver's at fault. And given the situation, wherever the crash was located, the circumstances and facts of loss, they're gonna know, okay, this is something I need to settle, or this is something we need to push to a jury, or it'll give 'em a better idea to really figure out how they're gonna proceed with the crash settlement. So that's the most important thing from that standpoint. You know, not only will it give you a cheaper crash, I mean, Cheaper crashes. It'll give you better insurance pricing because firstly, obviously, you have lower crashes, but secondly too, because the insurance companies who would be working with you would have the better ability to settle the claims more quickly. If you don't know much about my background, you know, I spent over 10 years of my 15-year insurance career underwriting truck insurance. So I absolutely understand from firsthand experience how much of a difference this could make for your fleet. I've seen different carriers come to us, different insurance, Insurance risks come to us, and some would have cameras and others wouldn't. And not only could you tell a difference in their loss runs, but you could also tell a difference about the safety culture around the fleet entirely. So I completely understand it and take it from my experience. It's a great look when you're approaching the insurance marketplace or when your insurance producers approach the insurance marketplace on your behalf to have these systems in place. Anything you can do to help improve safety is always a good thing. Obviously there are costs involved with this, you know, but at the same time too, if you look at it as an investment versus a cost, I think that you could easily see that just looking at the 3 things I've outlined here, it's a really good opportunity for us to help improve safety, to help exonerate drivers who are involved in crashes, and also to help get some cheaper insurance along the way. So the other thing I really wanted to talk about today is if you're going to install cameras in the trucks, what are some things you should look for? After years of looking at or judging coaching events and taking care of camera programs for our clients, I've got a lot of good things that you should look for when you're looking at new camera systems. So a lot of the camera systems out there these days are integrated with VLD devices. So that's an extra added layer of integration with your current technology in the trucks. It can make the costs a little bit easier to absorb, and it could also make for easier installation. So that's a good consideration to think about too, is if the current ELD provider also has a camera solution that you could kind of tack onto, that could be pretty cool. Automatic detection or assignment of event triggers. I know that's a lot of words, but what I'm really talking about here is having the ability for that camera system to automatically detect what's going on in the truck. It can detect based on the camera, especially if it's rear-facing, whether a driver's exhibiting certain behaviors, if they're distracted, if they're driving inattentive. And whatever the case may be, but it also puts that event trigger. So it triggers the actual event to be shown to your management. So that's important to have, and some camera systems just don't. So it's important to talk to your camera provider and see, or potential camera providers, and ask that question. Can the system automatically detect the events? And if so, does it have a trigger associated with that? Now, the big word is AI. Artificial intelligence is all over the place, obviously, these days. It's nice to have. It can add some flexibility to your camera programs, can improve some outcomes, especially with following distances and things like that. But it's not 100% necessary. You know, so that's not an absolute, but it's a nice to have, I would think. One of the most important things you wanna make sure is that the backend is user-friendly. So the drivers aren't gonna be interacting with this system much at all. You know, obviously it's an installation in the truck, it's sitting there, but they're not touching it. Or interacting with it like they would an ELD device. Who you really have to, you know, think about when you're purchasing this is the backend user, which might be you, could be your safety directors or your safety management team. It could be a third party like MySafetyManager, like us, or whoever it is. You wanna make sure that you have that input and say, hey, these are the things that I want. It has to be user-friendly for them. 'Cause if it's not user-friendly for them, it's gonna put up a barrier for them to use it and it won't be effective. So you'd essentially be wasting your time and energy. Another good nice-to-have but not have-to-have feature that you should look for in a camera system are in-cab alerts. Most of the systems these days have built-in speakers, and if an event is triggered, say it's a hard brake event or a hard cornering event or a situation where a seat belt is not being detected as being on, then there's an audible alert that happens in the cab, and it kind of gives the driver instant feedback as to what the situation is. So if there's a following distance issue, the system will come on and say, hey, you need to back off a little bit. Probably a little more formal than that, I'm sure, but you get the picture. And so that helps give that kind of immediate feedback even before your coaching team or your driver management team will have the ability to go in there and talk with them. All right, so wrap up. We've talked a little bit about safety improvements, crash exoneration, and cheaper insurance, all being good reasons why you should install cameras in your trucks. We also chatted about a couple of good features that you should have when you're looking for camera systems. And I also wanted to chat just for a minute about what you do with the events. So this is kind of what we like to call the double-edged sword of data, right? So just like with ELD data, what you do with camera event data is also very, very important. If you go and collect the data, you have the events triggered in the system. If it just sits in the system and nobody reviews it, it doesn't do anybody any good, right? It just kind of sits there. And in fact, having that information and having the ability to know these things could be happening in terms of unsafe driving events and things that could be hurting your company from a safety or compliance perspective, that can actually hurt you in a court of law or against anybody else possibly who might bring a claim against you. So what you wanna do is you wanna have an effective management system for this new data that's being introduced in your company. Now, what you could do is have one person designated and assigned to handling these events as they pop up, and they can physically go into the system and most camera systems system companies will train the driver or train driver managers or train your staff on how to use the backend system as well. But the catch is, what do you do with that event? So you can go in there and look at it, but what happens? You know, what happens after that? Well, my suggestion is that you come up with a camera program that fits into your larger progressive discipline program. And what you really want to identify here is who, how often, and what happens. So the who is, who's going to be responsible for reviewing these events when they Are triggered and come up in your management system. And then who's also gonna be responsible for coaching the drivers and making sure the corrective action training and things like that are taken care of? How often? That deals with how often are you gonna be reviewing these events? And what happens is, what happens once the event is triggered? And so usually what happens once the event's triggered, you're gonna have some sort of driver coaching, or you're gonna have a communication or some sort of sit-down or discussion with the driver, and that's gonna have certain outcomes. And those could include anything like verbal warnings. Written warnings, corrective action training, where the driver's actually assigned a course or videos to go watch or something like that, suspension from driving duties, or even up to termination. You know, again, it's all part of your larger progressive discipline program. So just like if they received a roadside violation or if they failed a DO— or failed an ELD audit, whatever the case might be, those have consequences or should have consequences in your progressive discipline program. As should video events that are recorded. So with that, you know, it's really taking that and looking at it and making it effective and fit into your fleet is the real way you're going to truly improve your safety and also really prevent those nuclear verdicts. Because as soon as the event actually happens, you have the event data, you need to show that you have action on your part from the fleet to keep that, whatever the behavior was or whatever the event was, from happening again. So in many situations, we really look out there and say, okay, these are the things that are happening and these are good ways we can go in to help improve that. Some things we do with our Master Safety Manager members each day, you know, we're going in there and monitoring events from the event recorders. We're sending coaching referrals, we're sending driver warning letters on behalf of our clients. We're also actually assigning corrective action training as part of those driver warning letters. And the largest part, and one of the more important things too, is we're actually documenting everything. So we're actually taking care of the documentation for our clients. They're making sure that we're showing that it's been completed, whether it's the corrective action training or the driver warning letters showing that that action is, is there. So it's, it's really making more of a holistic system because again, if you don't document it, then it didn't happen, right? Well, that about wraps up for this episode. If you're interested in installing cameras in your trucks or have any other fleet safety or DOT compliance needs, please don't hesitate to reach out to us. You can call us at 855- 800-221-1550, or find us online at mysafetymanager.com. Until next time, stay safe out there, and thanks for joining us on the CSA Basics Podcast.

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