Netradyne test drives truck safety AI

Safety managers at five commercial fleets are getting a first look at Driver•i, a new AI-based application from Netradyne that lets them talk through safety issues to reduce their risks.

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"It is essentially bringing all of the help center content that we've created over the last five years to the fingertips of the fleet manager or the safety officer directly," says Barrett Young, chief marketing officer at Netradyne. "Instead of having to scour through articles of how to do something or what something means, they could simply just ask the question in a conversational format to the AI tool and it brings up all the information they need."

Driver•i reduces risk by helping safety managers and fleet managers address risk problems faster, according to Young. The system scores drivers, giving managers more precise information on their strengths and weaknesses. It presents this information in the form of a Safety Manager Assistant that managers can use like a co-pilot.

"A fleet manager can say, 'Hey, Joe is going to run a route up to Seattle from Colorado, maybe from Denver, next Friday. Provide a risk assessment of that route, based off the weather, the driving score, other road conditions and things like that.'" he explained. "The AI can come back and say the weather is forecasted through different weather filters to be snowy and rainy over the 10-day forecast. Joe's historical driving record has not been good during those types of conditions. We may recommend a different driver to take that route, knowing that these relevant criteria are in place."

Similarly, Driver•i can manage coaching of drivers to improve on their aptitudes. "If I spend four hours a day, going through and analyzing what drivers need to be coached, and then another four hours during the day doing the coaching process, then I can only get through four drivers a day," Young said. "If I can reduce the four hours a day of analyzing which drivers should be coached, then I can go from four hours of analysis to maybe 30 minutes, and I can increase the number of drivers I coach per day by 50 to 100%. I can therefore address more drivers at once and address risk faster."

An average fleet safety manager can have anywhere from 10 to 30 or 40 drivers to supervise, which can mean that as soon as they have evaluated and worked with everyone, they have to start all over again to re-evaluate and update those drivers, according to Young. 

He expects that more than 50%, possibly more than 70% of Netradyne's customers will eventually sign on to use Driver•i. "Nine out of 10 customers we speak to are very excited about trying and testing it out," Young said.