Vehicular GPRS and Journey Management System in Latin America

Abstract

The main risk associated with our operations is the large number of journeys that we must make. The combination of geography, weather, size of equipment, road conditions, driving hours, and lack of public safe driving education factors increase the probability of a vehicular incident with serious consequences.In Latin America, we have implemented a real-time tracking system for our vehicles linked to the journey management system for all journeys. This global positioning system works in conjunction with local cellular networks, enabling the transmission and visualization through a Web-based computer interface in real time for all units. Company managers and supervisors can monitor these vehicles on their own computers in real time, including information about the movement, position, speed, status of the backup battery, and the journey schedule, including the names of the vehicle driver and passengers, as well as information about the hazardous materials that the vehicle may be carrying. Consequently, an outstanding supervision plan is in place with the information necessary to take appropriate action in the event of unexpected occurrences.The short term benefits that we are already observing are the corrections of the deviations of the driving policy related to speeding and proper journey management. As a result of the supervision enabled by this system, corrective actions have been implemented.The long-term benefits include behavioral changes related to driving habits, better use of the vehicle (avoiding personal use of official vehicles), possible location information in case of a theft, and reduced time required to activate the emergency plan in the event of an accident. Problem DescriptionEach day, thousands of people are killed and injured on our roads. According to the World Health Organization, every year 1.2 million people are known to die in road accidents worldwide. Millions of others sustain injuries, with some suffering permanent disabilities (Peden 2004). This paper attempts to answer an increasing concern: how can we effectively prevent them at work within our own operations?In past years, our company has expended a great deal of effort in writing new or improving existing procedures based on lessons learned from investigations of past incidents and in providing defensive driving safety techniques training to employees. Despite these efforts, however, incidents still occur, which led to one major question: what else can we do?This question led to an extensive analysis and to research of the main causes of the vehicle accidents that we were experiencing. This exercise provided interesting data. One of the findings indicated that most cases involving severe injuries were directly caused by drivers exceeding safe speeds. In other cases, company procedures were simply not followed. The research also indicated that most of these cases also had a common additional cause: poor planning and poor supervision of these drivers before and during the journey.The research confirmed that the main contributing fact...