The Road Ahead
Welcome to The Road Ahead, a Fleetworthy podcast by where industry experts share insights on news and issues that impact fleet safety, compliance, and efficiency.
The Road Ahead
Smart Roadways: How In-Cab Alerts Improve Driver Safety
In this episode of The Road Ahead, Brenda Colombus from Drivewyze by Fleetworthy dives into the transformative impact of Smart Roadways. You'll discover how sharing real-time data through in-cab alerts not only reshapes driver behavior but significantly reduces accidents and makes our roads safer for everyone.
Welcome to this episode of The Road Ahead. This is John Van Ortwick, and I'm Rob Abbott. And we've got a special guest, Brenda Columbus, with us. We're going to talk about smart roadways, how in-cab alerts are transforming highway safety.
SPEAKER_00:I like smart roads. Those are better than driving on dumb roads, aren't they, John? We like smart roads. Better. You're now regretting joining this podcast, aren't you, Brenda?
SPEAKER_02:Good afternoon, guys. I'm in Crit Adventure, aren't I?
SPEAKER_01:You weren't ready for that opening, were you?
unknown:No.
SPEAKER_01:But Dumb Roadways is probably the name you guys threw out. So that's good. We didn't use that one. How would you just want you to get a little background about yourself and smart roadways and how that fit with DriveWise into the whole Fleetworthy enterprise?
SPEAKER_02:Uh, for sure. So uh I joined DriveWise uh about two and a half years ago now, um, coming from a background of managing tech projects. Um, since joining DriveWise, I've been focused uh really strongly on our Smart Roadways in-CAB Alerting service. So um in my role as a product manager, I work directly with our development team that actually builds the service. Uh, and I get to spend lots of time too with our um internal teams as well as our external customers who who procure the service to kind of hear what's going on in their world and make sure that we're building stuff that matches their needs and helps them solve some real problems.
SPEAKER_01:So why don't you tell us a little bit about drivewise and we can move into smart roadways and how that works.
SPEAKER_02:Sounds good. Um so DriveWise provides uh timely specific notifications uh specifically to commercial motor vehicles. Um, we got started um in the bypass world, so Ways Station Bypass World through our pre-clear product. Uh, and then over the last few years, we've evolved our in-cab services to include safety notifications. And those safety notifications could be um about anything from low bridges to uh steep grades or chain-up zones or even more dynamic real-time conditions um like slowdowns in traffic or work zones.
SPEAKER_00:So, I mean, in its simplest form, this is a location-specific notification on the ELD. So, like the the early notifications were hey, there's a way station ahead, or you could bypass this way station. Now you're doing a location-specific notification to a driver about some sort of safety issue.
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely. Um, and it could be anything from a static environmental thing um to real-time changing dynamic road conditions.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, so if I were sitting next to John while he's driving, and what purely hypothetically, John were doing something unsafe in the moment, right? I I could tap John on the shoulder and say that bridge is too low for your truck. But this sort of tells them in the moment via the ELD, so I don't have to ride with John.
SPEAKER_02:Exactly. So so when John doesn't have the benefit of an expert swamper like Rob, we can kind of take that role on and give drivers a little bit of an extra heads up uh about what's coming up on the road ahead of them.
SPEAKER_01:Got it. That's perfect. And what does it cost?
SPEAKER_02:Uh so smart roadways alerts are part of our drivewise free offering. So it is available to fleets and drivers at absolutely no charge.
SPEAKER_01:That's excellent. I just wanted to get that out of the way so we don't start an advertisement, we're not selling anything. This is a great free service that we with the states offer to the fleets in general.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it's no strings attached. You don't have to put a credit card in or anything like that. All you need to do is enable the service on your device.
SPEAKER_01:What inspired the drivewise free, the smart roadways portion of the drivewise service?
SPEAKER_02:Sure. So um on our own, Drivewise has placed thousands of alerts around the country uh regarding static hazards. So things that don't move around. So um, those are the things like steep grades and areas where trucks are prone to roll over, low bridges, that sort of thing. Um we really expanded our uh safety alerting service, though, with the with the um introduction of smart roadways. And what Smart Roadways does is we leverage agency partnerships to get more sophisticated real-time data that allows us to do more sophisticated alerts along the lines of slowdowns in traffic or when traffic cues are starting to build or work zones. Um, and we can also do um static alerts with the agency partnership as well, um, around things that really agencies would be the only authority that could give us that information. So things like uh road restrictions or some of the closures uh that might not be public knowledge, the agencies know and they can let us know um when capacity is reduced or when lanes are reduced, that sort of thing.
SPEAKER_00:It sounds like there's there's really two types here, right? So one is sort of the the static or fixed, like hey, they're always going to get a notification when they come at this this risk that is a fixed risk, this low bridge, yeah, or this this rollover, you know, turn, right? This turn where there's just a rollover risk. I think what you're describing is more dynamic then, right? So hey, there's a a risk ahead that's new. Can you give us some examples of that?
SPEAKER_02:Uh yeah. So think of things like um unusually heavy traffic congestion. Uh trucks are big, they take a long time to slow down. Uh we can ingest dynamic data feeds that tell us real-time road conditions, and then we can give trucks a heads up two or three miles in advance through their ELD device, that something's coming up long before they can even see it. Um, we can let them know that there's something going on on the road ahead, whether it's a closed lane or a work zone, uh, could be a service vehicle that's parked on the side of the road helping a stranded motorist. Uh, we can just give them that little bit of extra heads up to help them navigate whatever it is they're going to come up to. We'll check dynamic feeds once a minute to understand what's going on and then push all that information back to the trucks.
SPEAKER_00:That's brilliant. Because whenever I'm in a traffic slowdown or a stoppage on the freeway, if I'm just over the top of a hill, I always worry about somebody coming over the top of that hill behind me at highway speed, not knowing that I'm fully stopped just over the crest of the hill, right? So that's the sort of thing you're telling people in real time.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, absolutely. The back of the queue is not the place you want to be. Um, so so giving giving drivers that little bit of extra warning, um, often well before they can even see it, helps them prepare.
SPEAKER_01:Cool. Hey, cool. I got so many questions. Um I come from a technology background, so I'm gonna ask a little bit how is it installed? What is there any additional hardware I need in my vehicle? What's that process look like?
SPEAKER_02:No, we're not asking drivers to put any devices into their vehicle. Um, what we do is we've built a software platform that delivers all of our services. And we work with uh electronic logging device uh manufacturers and distributors to embed our software platform onto those devices. So all you need to do is enable the drivewise free service and you'll start getting safety alerts automatically. We also have mobile apps as well. So while most trucks use the electronic logging devices, we do have uh Android and iOS apps as well, all free.
SPEAKER_00:So for some drivers, the the handheld device that runs apps is also their ELD, might be mounted on that. Absolutely. In other cases, it might be an ELD tablet that's furnished by the motor carrier or their ELD provider. It can show up on either of those, the notification, right? So is it is it an audible notification that speaks to the driver or what does it look like?
SPEAKER_02:No, we try to keep it really low distraction and hands-free. So our software runs silently on the device. So the device can be um, it has to be running, but it doesn't have to have anything displayed on the screen. And uh when the truck crosses one of our geo fences, whether it's for a dynamic or a static hazard, our software will wake up and it'll it'll take over the screen for about 10 seconds with a full screen alert that shows an M U T C D compliant icon and very minimal text. Two lines of text, 25 characters max each line. So the idea is it just is something you can glance at, understand what you need, and ignore it. Um, on its own, it'll go away uh after about 10 seconds. Um, if you do need your device because you're maybe using it for your your navigation application or something like that, just a quick touch of the screen clears our alert as well. It does come with a chime. Um so it's just a simple auditory chime. What it actually sounds like depends on the the nature of your hardware, um, but it's very low distraction, very low touch.
SPEAKER_00:Well, you mentioned uh M U T C D. John and I are both uh self-about nerds, so we know that's the manual on uniform traffic control devices. That's right. Which sort of says, hey, this is what a road sign ought to look like. So these these images, right, John, that's how you spend your weekend reading the manual on uniform traffic control devices. Unfortunately, that are the green reg book, but one of the two. This is my surprise look. And so the that's what the images look like then. They look like real road signs, but it's on the tablet.
SPEAKER_02:Exactly. That's exactly right. So so everybody knows what the the icon for a work zone ahead looks like. Um we use the same icon.
SPEAKER_00:And is it audible as well? Does it speak to the driver or no?
SPEAKER_02:Uh there's no words, all it comes is with a single auditory chime just to help grab your attention.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. You know, I I know sometimes drivers can turn off the audible on their ELDs, and and that's you know, that's an option that some people want to do. Yep. Yeah, I think a fleet manager once told me with all the different things going on in the cab, it's starting to sound like a casino in there, you know. So this is visual and just provides a road sign on the dash, right? That's right.
SPEAKER_02:Yep.
SPEAKER_00:Super.
SPEAKER_02:So you don't have you don't have to worry about another truck blocking your view of a road sign that's all that's static on the side of the road. It's in your cab. It's on your ELD device, on your dash.
SPEAKER_00:And John, that'll look familiar to you from your weekend reading.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, thank you. And so it's something they're used to seeing. So is is it effective? Do we do the states look at the impact? What do you what how do you test the effectiveness of the alerts?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, absolutely. Um, so with all of our Smart Roadways alerts, we do some basic program metrics. So we can understand um by jurisdiction how many alerts we're sending by type, as well as how many unique vehicles we're reaching. Um, so we can give the states a really good indication of the reach of their of their programming. Um, and then on with our dynamic um real-time alerts, so things like traffic slowdowns, work zones, um service vehicles stopped on the road ahead, we also collect additional black box data or or behavior data. So, what we do is we collect speed data, speed and location data for uh 30 seconds before the alerts displayed and five minutes after the alerts displayed. So we can get a really clear picture of how drivers respond after they get the alert. So we aggregate and anonymize all of that data, but we can tell how our alerts affect braking behavior.
SPEAKER_00:Do the safety supervisors have access to that? Could they see, hey, these are the drivers who, when they get an alert about traffic slowdowns, change their behavior. These are the ones who now they stay on the gas.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, for fleets, we do provide some information back through our hub portal that's specific to their fleet. Um, for our agency partners who are sponsoring the alerts for their jurisdiction, we provide aggregated and anonymized data back to them.
SPEAKER_00:So to tell them, hey, what you're doing is working.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, exactly. Exactly. They're they're they're investing dollars with us to help make these alerts happen. Um so we provide them back some ROI. We help we help them understand how their their sponsorship is impacting traffic, and that same data helps us make our services better too.
SPEAKER_00:And that's how you can provide it for free to drivers. Exactly. Perfect.
SPEAKER_01:So a little misleading, it's not free, but the states are actually paying for the ability to show these to the drivers for free, which I think that's right. Something about the effectiveness and the fact that it's yeah. This is particularly any results you can share on the some of the testing that you've done in the past?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, absolutely. Um, so a couple of our states or a couple of our state partners have worked with uh third-party research teams to understand um the impact. They did a real deep dive into that black box data that we talked about. Um, and they were able to identify a few really interesting facts. So um looking at Ohio's data, uh, the research team from Cleveland State University identified a 29% reduction in secondary crashes and a 20.5 hours per mile reduction in delays relating to congestion. So it's there's real cost savings attached to preventing accidents. Um, and we're also able to understand how drivers respond. So we know that uh about 22% of drivers in one of the studies, drivers that were traveling more than 70 miles an hour, so these are the speeders, they slowed down by at least five miles an hour within 30 seconds of getting that alert. And that's really interesting because at the time they get the alert, they can't necessarily, it's two or three miles ahead of the actual slowdown. So they might not even be seeing that, but we still see a little dip in their braking behavior that indicates that that alert is is helping get their attention and preparing them for whatever's coming up on the road.
SPEAKER_00:So they're at least have a sense that something's coming I should be alert to, right?
SPEAKER_02:Yep, that that's exactly right. So one of the uh one of the studies that was done by Purdue University, they looked at data from Indiana and they took a particular driver's route and mapped it, and they mapped his speed at little dots all along that route. And then for that same location at the same time of day, for that same day, they got images from front-facing cameras from another from another source, and they were able to cross-reference what traffic conditions looked like as that particular truck was driving that particular route. And what they saw was right when the alert is displayed, there's a quick breaking behavior. So you're traveling at say 60 miles an hour, you'll see a little dip in speed, and then they'll kind of come back up to 60 miles an hour, and then you see a more prolonged and pronounced break as they approach the actual hazard. So what you can kind of anticipate or what you can kind of imagine is happening is they're driving along, alert pops up on my ELD device, take my foot off the gas, I look around, I don't see anything, come back up to traffic speed, oh, there it is, and then you slow down.
SPEAKER_01:And so just in reducing that reaction time.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that's absolutely we're we're grabbing we're grabbing drivers' attention and helping them get ready for whatever it is they're gonna be approaching.
SPEAKER_00:You know, I imagine for truck drivers, you know, if you drive 10, 11 hours a day, it's easy to sort of get lost in thought, right? Oh, but you you know, your mind might be somewhere else for a moment. And so this kind of brings you back to the roadway, right? Yep.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, exactly. What were you talking about, Rob?
SPEAKER_00:Sorry. I was gonna say John is lost in music. He's singing along to his his favorite heavy metal hairband. So one thing that I've all observed a lot is sometimes on the freeway you see that big road sign over the top that says, you know, left lane blocked ahead or crash ahead, right? Why don't they just put up one of those on every freeway? Couldn't they just do that instead?
SPEAKER_02:Our messaging is geared specifically for commercial motor vehicles. So we could we can change information. Um, so so if you think of a say a road closure, um, and and you're gonna use one of those big gantry signs to reroute traffic, maybe you need to reroute commercial motor vehicles differently. You don't want CMVs going through a residential neighborhood or going through a road that's too narrow for them. So we can give them different information. We can also give them information at a different point in time. So we can give we can give work zone information to commercial motor vehicles earlier to help them navigate and and get prepared because a lot of times, as soon as the four-wheelers get the same information, they just want to get ahead of the truck. So that that extra space that the driver has left for themselves to slow down, you get a little car that zips in and cut and and and shortens that space on you. So we help them navigate those changes before anybody else can.
SPEAKER_00:You know, you touched on something there. Um it's long been observed when you look at crash data that for whatever reason trucks are, you might say, over involved in work zone incidents. Do you think that's because of the stop and go and the people trying to merge and then the the braking distance the truck has provided between the truck and the vehicle in front of it?
SPEAKER_02:There is a lot of stuff going on when you're approaching a work zone and everybody's jockeying for position and the small vehicles jockey differently than big trucks. And I think they get I think that the big trucks often get the short end of the stick in that deal.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, well, truck drivers will tell you that for sure that people are impatient. But that's uh that's really interesting. So the the other thing about those road signs over the freeway that, you know, the ones that are mounted above, I you know, I see them in urban areas, but those got to be expensive. I can't imagine they can put one of those at every mile on every highway in the state, right? So this is seems to me, yeah, like a more efficient way to like get into the vehicles in places that aren't served by those signs, right?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, we're we're doing everything electronically. There's no infrastructure. We don't need any roadside infrastructure, and we don't need any infrastructure in the in the trucks. We're not asking them to put another device on their dash. We're not asking states to put another physical sign that they have to maintain on the side of the road.
SPEAKER_00:John, did you hear that? Our taxes are going down, John. Did you hear that? Right. Our taxes are going down. I love that you're leveraging the hardware in the cab.
SPEAKER_01:That's yeah, that's perfect. Uh you mentioned the truck-specific routing, and I know you did a little homework. You do you do you have a 24-7 hotline for like emergency related?
SPEAKER_02:We do, yeah. Yeah. For all of our Smart Roadways agency customers, we provide 24-7 emergency alert service. So we have a help desk that they can access any time of day, any day of the week, um, to help get up ad hoc messaging around uh urgent, unplanned events that are going to impact traffic for more than a couple of hours. So things like um interstates that get closed in all like uh all the lanes in one direction will get closed because of a major crash. Um we can hop on, put up some geo fences prior to the the exit before to let trucks have an escape route before they get stuck in a queue uh waiting for a traffic, waiting for traffic to clear after an accident. Um we can also do some some weather alerting as well. Um so last fall with Hurricane Helene, um we did uh probably close to 60 different locations for emergency alerts. Um, and over the course of a few months, we sent probably about 800,000 alerts to commercial motor vehicles. Um the the day of the hurricane, it started with alerts that just ask drivers to stay away, stay out of the area, keep themselves safe, keep the infrastructure safe. After the storm had passed, as agents on the ground were able to get a better sense of what roads were safe for trucks to pass, we could help with emergency alerts that that let trucks know where to go and where not to go. So it helps keeps drivers safe, keeps them out of trouble, keeps them from getting stranded, and it helps agencies protect their infrastructure because you're not getting trucks stuck on roads that aren't appropriate for big trucks.
SPEAKER_01:And you're able to adjust those able to adjust those in near real time based on the changing conditions. At first, you just want to keep them off the road completely, and then what's the correct route? I that I'd absolutely talk to some of our fleets in North Carolina that just thought that was amazing.
SPEAKER_00:So it reminds me of uh you remember a couple years ago, there was uh a bridge that basically caught fire was damaged in a major fire. I guess damaged in a major fire is a better way to say it. And uh that route on I-95 was down. You can't just take I-95 out of the mix in the northeast, right? So uh is that an example of how you might notify fleets at hey, you've got to reroute early, right? And don't go through Philadelphia on I-95 right now.
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely, absolutely. Um, we did the same uh in Maryland with Key Bridge as well. Um, we were able to get some alerts up to keep them out of the downtown core.
SPEAKER_01:Right, and the key bridge there that the tunnels that you can't necessarily use. So, yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_00:That's cool. Very cool. Just to be clear, so you know, a lot of people ask me about these in-cab alerts and they they compare it to services that are crowdsourced. I guess one of the most popular is Waze. This isn't crowdsourced data, so this isn't other drivers saying, hey, there's a a backup here. This is the state agency telling the drivers there's backup here, right?
SPEAKER_02:Right. We work with trusted partners that give us that give us real-time data. Um, so we're not crowdsourcing. The other thing that differentiates us from some of those crowdsourced platforms is the the so what behavior that we collect after the fact. So while while Waze can can display a similar, hey, the route ahead of you is congested kind of alert, what they're not able to do is provide back to the agencies any sort of return on that. We do they don't know how many how many eyes are on those alerts, how many times they're delivered, or what drivers are doing after they get the alert.
SPEAKER_00:Well, and I've always felt that some of that crowdsourced data can be suspect in some cases when I'm driving.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We're not using crowdsource data right now at all.
SPEAKER_01:And a million dollar question. What do drivers think of the in-cap alerts?
SPEAKER_02:So one of the studies that I had mentioned earlier, um, the Cleveland state team actually did some surveys. So they were looking at uh the alerting service, so traffic slowdown alerts specifically in Ohio. And they sent grad students out to 16 rest areas across Ohio to interview drivers. And they talked to, I think it was over 600 different drivers over the course of a few days. And one of the questions they asked um was around perception. So we have a we were getting a sense of how how how the alerts are affecting um braking behavior, but we wanted to understand how drivers were feeling about the alerts. And of the drivers who had received uh received a slowdown alert, uh 89% of them felt that they were valuable. 51% of them said it was extremely valuable.
SPEAKER_01:That seems pretty good. 89%.
SPEAKER_02:Yep. We were really happy.
SPEAKER_01:That's impressive.
SPEAKER_02:We're gonna keep shooting for yeah, we're gonna keep shooting for 100. Um, we're always looking for ways to to make the service better, make sure that the alerts are are accurate and timely.
SPEAKER_00:Um well, and it it strikes me that drivers are okay with in-cab notifications as long as they're meaningful, limited, and not noisy. And when I say noisy, not the volume of them, but just the the frequency and the volume and the reliability, right? And so what is what we're doing here strikes me as very, very limited, but very strategic location specific. Like, hey, we're gonna tell you when you really need to know, right? And only when you really need to know, right?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah. We're we we try to make sure that we're not over-alerting drivers. Um, so we'll prioritize alerts that that are proximal to each other, um, so that we we're not pinging, pinging, pinging, pinging. Um, we'll we'll filter those alerts down.
SPEAKER_01:Super. So how do you how's the service evolving and what are the plans for the future as you as you move forward?
SPEAKER_02:Sure, great question. Um, so our most recent innovation um was the addition of a of an integration with a partner company called Information Logistics. And Information Logistics has a service called Help Alerts that allows their customers to create uh WIA alerts, so wireless emergency alerts. So this is like the uh Amber alerts or the tornado warnings that you get on your cell phone. Uh the help alerts customers can create those uh through all of the appropriate secure channels specific for transportation emergency. With our integration with information logistics, we can pick up their same feed and create customized in-cab versions of those alerts. So using our own simplified UI with the regular icons and limited text, we can give drivers the same heads up about the same kind of issues that the state is choosing to send out a WiiA alert on as well. Um kind of staying in the theme of emergency alerts as well, one of the things that we're working on right now is a way to better share information about emergency alerts across jurisdictions. So one of the learnings that we had when we were when we were working with our agents, our agencies throughout the throughout Helene last year was when one state requests some emergency alerts in their jurisdiction, the neighboring states want to know because they want to understand changing conditions, they want to make sure that alerts are aligning, that the information is correct, and they don't necessarily have visibility on what each other's doing. Time is of the essence in an emergency. So helping to helping with that communication, I think could could be valuable. And I think we have some information we can share there as well. And even within the same, even within the same state, the DOT might be doing things that that law enforcement isn't aware of, or law enforcement is is setting up emergency alerts that the DOT isn't aware of. So just making sure that that information is surfaced for all of the stakeholders is one of our priorities that we're working on right now. Going forward, lots of opportunity. Um, as AI and machine learning just continues to evolve, um, we're looking for ways that we can enhance even further our filtering and and prioritization of the various alerts that come into the into the queue.
SPEAKER_01:Sounds great. So just to recap, it doesn't cost the fleets anything. There's no hardware, very simple installation. Drivers like it, and it's effective. So it seems like you got it. Pretty good opportunity for police to take advantage.
SPEAKER_02:We hope so. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Any last words, Rob? Any great parting wisdom?
SPEAKER_00:Uh no, I I think it's it's really straightforward, right? Is that for the driver, there's no reason not to do this. Uh, for the states, this is really a tremendous avenue to get notifications to thousands more people in a very effective way that can be measured. And the and the data shows it's it works, right? It's very straightforward.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, fantastic. Thank you very much. And uh we'll see everybody on the next episode of the Road Ahead. Thanks for having me.