GPS Tracking ROI

I’m talking about speed control or cruise control here. I love a good cruise control. It really cuts down on driver fatigue and can do a much better job holding the car’s speed constant than I can. A constant speed certainly contributes to road safety and fuel economy and means that I won’t be one of those triply annoying drivers who passes you and then unconsciously slows down .. God, don’t ya hate that behavior?

But in my own GPS tracking and safety enhancement work I learned some facts which I find are not commonly known. Cruise control can create a dangerous situation for you if you don’t pay attention.

On slippery roads, icy or rain covered, please help ensure a Merry Christmas to all of us by turning you speed control off. Speed control technology is actually quite safe under normal circumstances, but on slippery pavement it can pose at least three major areas of concern.

First, it disconnects you from the feel of the road. When the road is slippery you receive important clues to your car’s coefficient of friction with the road through your right foot. When you feed in just a little more throttle and you don’t get the increase in speed you’re expecting you _know_ things are getting risky and it’s time to slow down.

The second problem is directly relates to number one. The speed control mechanism is relatively brainless. It senses the speed of the car and compares it to the speed you set. If the vehicle speed is lower the cruise control opens the throttle (steps on the gas) to increase speed. Still too low … well, easy, step on the gas harder. If the wheels begin to slip this can lead to a situation when the tires are spinning at an insane speed. If you suddenly hit dry pavement .. or worse, if one wheel hist dry pavement, you may find your car trying to commit an auto acrobatics act worthy of a movie stunt driver. even if you’re ready for it .. and we certainly aren’t always spring-loaded to make sudden steering corrections, you may not be able to regain control in time. You can observe this easily if you are on a wide, safe, slippery road sometime .. and especially if your car has a tachometer. gingerly engage the cruise and watch and see if the engine rpm doesn’t increase while the car speed remains constant or even slows down .. that’s your tires spinning. Warning .. better to trust me on this rather than actually do it.

Lastly cruise control can really contribute to hydroplaning accidents, like the one mentioned in the web site. This is a combination of problems one and two. the driver can’t ‘feel’ the incipient loss of traction and the cruise control will call for more and more engine power as the vehicle speed slows. this can be really critical if you’re under speed control on a normal wet road and your car suddenly hits standing water. You know how the sound and the sudden deceleration makes your heart skip a beat? Well just as the car becomes unstable and the tires have the maximum capability to hydroplane, the ‘dumb’ speed control sensor is feeding in more power … exactly what you don’t want.

So there’s Dave’s tip for the day, use you speed control but use it wisely. Mita suggested this to me, she’s always looking out for me and for other hurry-up drivers out there.

My letter to Wal-Mart Chief Executive Officer H. Lee Scott would go like this:
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During an October speech to employees, Chief Executive Officer H. Lee Scott said that by 2015, the retailer’s fleet of 7,100 trucks would achieve 13 mpg. Currently, its fleet averages 6.5 mpg.
The improvements “will not only change our fleet but eventually change trucks everywhere in the world,” Scott said in the October address.
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Dear Mr. Scott. Congratulations on taking the bill by the horns on an issue of deep importance. Today’s trucking industry is suffering from an epidemic of whining and hand wringing mainly brought out by the 2007 EPA Emissions regulations which will force more economic, and hence more profitable engines in an industry whose major impediment to progress is its own fear of change. The 2007 regulations will increase economy as a byproduct of the lower emissions standards but in terms of moving the country forward, I feel, they do not go far enough.

It’s very interesting that Wal-Mart, an enterprise which only relies on trucks as am adjunct to their main business role would be the first to publicly see the advantages to taking an important but well-considered and certainly doable step to increased profits.

We live in a country that placed men on the moan numerous times and yet now can hardly put a man in earth orbit. We live in a world that flew the Atlantic in 3 hours routinely and comfortably and now can’t do it in six. We are assailed by whiners on a daily basis predicting how “foreign” manufacturing and outsourcing will be the death of America and yet have corporations like Wal-Mart leading the way in making huge strides in employing Americans, at a profit, by using foreign production as what it is meant to be … a tool in the business leader’s portfolio of methods of growing his or her business.

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Jim Dugan, a spokesman for Peoria, Ill.-based Caterpillar Inc., a supplier of truck and bus engines, said that while customers desire improved fuel efficiency, predicting what mileage rates diesel engines will be able to reach in the future is not easy.
“It’s hard to hazard a guess that far in advance,” Dugan said.
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Caterpillar supplies a lot of engines to Wal-Mart. Isn’t that a wonderfully supportive statement to come from a major supplier to a major customer who wants to spend more? “It’s hard to hazard a guess…”, well Mr. Dugan, I would submit you and Caterpillar are expected by your stockholders to do more than hazard guesses. Right now you are sitting back and enjoying your ample salary and benefits because there has always been a Caterpillar and there always will be. If I were with a world-class engine manufacturer I’d be telling Mr. Scott, “You bet we will, in fact we’ll do 14 mpg.”. A few years from now when some Chinese diesel manufacturer (or here’s a thought, someone brave enough to look beyond heavy, stinky diesels) says , “here’s your 13 mpg engine, Wal-Mart.” the Mr. Dugans of the US transportation industry will go crying to Washington for relief, citing all the American jobs lost to “those damn foreigners”.

Here’s a thought for Mr. Dugan and the rest of the naysayers out there … some free advice which I would usually charge professional service fees for …. get a clue! Those American jobs won’t be lost (and they will be lost with your present attitude) due to ‘the foreigners’. They will be lost to you, the highly paid American business leaders sitting on your duffs telling major customers what can’t be done. The writing is on the wall, can you read it?

To conclude with Mr. Scott, go for it, sir. Stay the course and realize that you know more than these naysayers, that Wal-Mart is more powerful and has more business savvy, even if you’re not in their particular market niche. 13 mpg is doable, and more.

Oh, and as a PS., Wal-Mart is a big-time Qualcomm GPS user. So is Werner and a number of other large trucking firms. Yet Werner is the only company making use of their OmniTRACS GPS tracking systems to run automated log books? Why is that one wonders? It’s not only a great employee-pleasure and a recognized risk management tool, it’s apart of the more mileage equation just as much as new tire technology of fender skirts.

PPS. For anyone who wants to save 10 to 15% on their fuel costs the technology is ready today, see: www.satviz.com

ok, seems like you can’t mention GPS without the word cost in the same sentence, even though the basic infrastructure of the technology is free and equipment is cheaper every day.

Secondly, when it comes to preventing crime, everyone thinks it’s good idea, but nobody wants to leap out and pay for it. Hard to blame anyone in government for not taking the lead on this either, nobody (except the police officer on the beat) actually gets paid to reduce crime.

The article I posted above, though, has some masterful thought behind it. It’s well worth a read and some thoughtful reflection. We all know crime ought to be reduced, and we all know there’s a huge emotional as well as a dollar and cents cost to crime. But there often seems so little that we can actually quantify. Doing the right thing is the thing to do and going good deeds is high on everyone’s list of “wanna dos”, but a bean counter can’t assign value to good deeds.

Well, let’s out on our bean counter hat and see is we can’t do some real world math here. First of all, we don’t know how to assign a value to the human cost of crime. The suffering of a rape victim, the problems the children of an incarcerated criminal face while growing up, the fear that sweeps over the store clerk when the crook points the gun at her .. these are horrible, tragic things, but since we are pretending to be verified bean counters we must assign them all a dollars and cents cost of zero.

Now, for every crime there is a perpetrator. Our law enforcement system (a very expensive service of society, by the way) has the task of preventing (when possible) the commission of crime, and when a crime does occur, apprehending the criminal. From there the criminal enters the justice system and likely as not will be incarcerated, or place don supervised parole, if found guilty.

There is probably no one reading this message who hasn’t, at some point in their life, had the urge to commit a crime. What stopped us? Well, moral teachings, conscience, but (come clean now), the thought that we might get arrested and go to jail. Goodness knows how many assinine supervisors are alive or how many diamond rings are still in the jewelry store showcase because of the fear of incarceration. But obviously, this fear isn’t enough, because hundreds of thousands of crimes still get committed each year and one has to assume that the vast majority of the perpetrators knew about the police and the legal system.

Actually, many of those perpetrators were just poker players. depending on the crime and the area you commit it, the chances of actually getting caught can be relatively small. Too large for you and I perhaps, but for a high stakes player, not all that bad. So it’s pretty clear we need something extra in addition to the present system to stare potential crooks in the eye and make them weight the odds more closely.

When a violator is convicted and sent to prison he or she obviously won’t be committing any more crimes from the inside, but remember that bean counter hat? It costs about $30,000 a year, on average, to incarcerate a prisoner. Put a thousand crooks behind bars and you’re looking at 30 million bucks, per year, to keep them from committing another crime.

Obviously, we don’t try to lock up every offender, for life. We couldn’t afford to. So we let them out on supervised parole. This costs money too, but a lot less. The problem has always been, it’s impractical to have parole office/parolee contact more frequently than every week or so, at best, and a hell of a lot of crime can happen in a week. So, more crime gets committed and more parolee’s get yanked back into the prison system, at $30k per year.

Enter GPS tracking. For about $3200 a year an offender can be monitored 24×7. Right away we are looking at a nearly 10 to 1 cost savings. With a properly administered system the terms of release can be set up in any appropriate way. An offender can be allowed out on “house arrest”, only being given permission to leave his residence for work and other authorized tasks, s/he can be allowed to go anywhere excepting ares prohibited by the terms of the release programs, hours of the day, days of the week, literally any restriction desired can be designed in at no extra cost.

If a 10 to 1 savings isn’t enough, remember that the offender can be made to pay any or all of the cost of the system. Monetary fines are typical of many sentences, there’s absolutely no reason that the fine could not be assessed to cover the cost of the surveillance. So we could be looking at nearly a 100% savings. Bean counters should actually be rubbing their hands in glee.

Lastly, consider one other phenomenon not directly calculable on a spreadsheet. In my experience using GPS tracking to monitor truck fleets, business vehicles and teenage drivers, it’s easily shown that the fact that the subjects are being monitored has a direct bearing on their tendency to make the right choices. Once drivers know that all their speeding will be shown, or that non-use of their seatbelt will be directly monitored, their behavior changes, predictably, so that they commit offenses at a much, much lower rate. It’s easy to see how widespread use of GPS tracking will cause a very large percentage of offenders to calculate the odds differently so that their “poker equation” works out much closer to a normal person’s. Thus the human cost of crime, which we agreed at the beginning is huge, but not readily expressed in arithmetic terms will be substantially lower. This is another great gain to society and it comes along as a free bonus to the actual arithmetic cost savings.

So, if you’re involved in the criminal punishment/crime prevention business … or you vote for people who are, next time you hear the old “we have no money” refrain you now know that whole excuse is false and non-thinking. let;s think like a “bean counter” and make our world a safer, better place to live and save a fortune while we’re doing it.

Interesting study here. It almost seems as if they are going “around Robin Hood’s barn� (as my daddy used to say) to get to a technology that works, but the idea definitely has merit.

A simple teen tracker GPS will give parents actionable information without the expense and boredom of watching hours of video boredom waiting for the one action the parent needs to correct. But, there certainly is merit in actually “seeing” what the teens are up to … hmm, wonder if the cameras can be run when the car is parked … talk about an invasion of privacy *smile*, this could be a great birth control tool too.

Driving too fast, driving when and where they are not supposed to, and improper use of seatbelts are the three major areas of driving monitoring that are absolutely proven to save lives.

It’s up to you, as a parent, to decide if you want to give your kids the best chance to stay alive and uninjured or do you want to sacrifice the chance just to be your teen’s “buddy”. Camera or GPS, or both, is your best chance to make a difference.

One of my parent company’s largest clients, Orkin Pest Control, installed passive GPS tracking devices in all its customer service vehicles. In addition to watching for speeding and other dangerous driving activities, the systems monitor seat best use. Orkin’s own risk management director claims a reduction in driving related injuries that has saved the company more the 17 million dollars since they implemented the GPS tracking program. (There�s a lot more info on my main site, www.satviz.com). Recently Orkin’s senior management received a letter from one of their field employees that said, “thank you for saving my life”. The author had an aversion to wearing seat belts and had frankly been pissed when the company started monitoring. But since he had to wear his seatbelt or be fired, he wore it. Along came a big accident, which he survived uninjured … he became a believer, and in the end was very grateful that the company cared enough about him to force him to do the right thing. Your teen might bitch about being monitored also, but think how he or she (and you) will feel if it saves their life or keeps them out of a chair for life?

Whatever system you choose, choose one _now_. Christmas is just around the corner and you know you are going to spend thousands on Christmas shopping. Allocate a few hundred dollars to giving your child the gift of life.

Look for a system that positively monitors seat belt use (mine do, some of my competitors do, others don’t care). Don’t be a don’t care parent.

Equip your child’s car with at least the level of technology that your gold cart uses on Saturdays, and protect your driving children to at least the level of care that your pest control technician enjoys … they’re worth it, are they not?

I’m way behind on my promised series regarding GPS teen tracking. Sorry but the business of selling these things sometimes gets in the way.

Here’s an article just too well done to leave alone, though.

Most regular readers here already know my stand on this, kids’ “right to privacy” has no priority when it comes time to save their lives. The stats on teen driving deaths, injuries and the deaths they cause to others are just too, too scary. Start your child from the beginning, when they first start to talk bout driving, with the idea that driving is a privilege granted and it carries a price … supervising. Then stick to your guns.

One thing that we’ll cover more, soon, is the idea of tracking the vehicle or tracking the cell phones. cell phone tracking only world reliably when the trackee wants it to work. There are a thousand and one ways to trick the system. If you are going to do this at all, then invest in a proper, mounted tool that tracks the vehicle, not the phone.

I also would never install one of these devices covertly. that would be insulting and degrading to my child, as if I though s/he was a criminal. In addition to fostering truth and understanding, there is a much bigger advantage to putting this on the teen’s car, making it public knowledge and making sure the teen reviews the records of the system along with you. The hidden advantage is, knowing that they are being watched automatically corrects dangerous behavior in the vast majority of cases … and knowing the box is ‘watching’ allows the teen to avoid the most deadly of situations, dares by other teens to break the riles.

Just think you might not only save your child’s life abut your neighbor’s child as well.

Sleep well.

I’m way behind on my promised series regarding GPS teen tracking. Sorry but the business of selling these things sometimes gets in the way.

Here’s an article just too well done to leave alone, though.

Most regular readers here already know my stand on this, kids’ “right to privacy” has no priority when it comes time to save their lives. The stats on teen driving deaths, injuries and the deaths they cause to others are just too, too scary. Start your child from the beginning, when they first start to talk bout driving, with the idea that driving is a privilege granted and it carries a price … supervising. Then stick to your guns.

One thing that we’ll cover more, soon, is the idea of tracking the vehicle or tracking the cell phones. cell phone tracking only world reliably when the trackee wants it to work. There are a thousand and one ways to trick the system. If you are going to do this at all, then invest in a proper, mounted tool that tracks the vehicle, not the phone.

I also would never install one of these devices covertly. that would be insulting and degrading to my child, as if I though s/he was a criminal. In addition to fostering truth and understanding, there is a much bigger advantage to putting this on the teen’s car, making it public knowledge and making sure the teen reviews the records of the system along with you. The hidden advantage is, knowing that they are being watched automatically corrects dangerous behavior in the vast majority of cases … and knowing the box is ‘watching’ allows the teen to avoid the most deadly of situations, dares by other teens to break the riles.

Just think you might not only save your child’s life abut your neighbor’s child as well.

Sleep well.

What’s a 7% reduction in fatalities? 744 lives in 2002 compared to 689 in 2004. Percentages and lives don’t mean that much though, unless you own one of those little roadside crosses that you visit with flowers from time to time.

However, miles driven from 2002 to 2004 increased, and yet, with a very simple piece of software, the GPS tracking system already installed in officer’s cars for other police/safety reasons, Pennsylvania avoided 55 deaths in two years.

It’s hard to put a cost on a human life, but let’s, for sake of argument, say that an average death costs society at least $2500,000 in overall life cycle costs. That’s nearly $14,000,000 saved. I’m not familiar with the exact GPS tracking system used by the Pennsylvania State Police but even with every bell and whistle imaginable they have likely spend less than a million.

So if you don’t care much about human suffering .. all business … hard core … just think of the 14 to 1 or better GPS Return On Investment (ROI) shown here.

The I told you so part in the title? You know my line by now … you can’t manage what you can’t measure. I’ve been preaching this same use of technology to police departments and other emergency responders for years … thank goodness Pennsylvania had ears … I’m sure the 55 people who didn’t die would thank them too, if they knew.

Accident records in most states today are kept at a resolution of a mile or so at best. If 10 accidents occur in mile 123 of a certain highway, someone has to physically survey that mile and make a guess at where the past accidents were and what the hazards were that contributed. If, instead, the location is reduced to within a few meters from the GPS tracking system in the officer’s car, engineers can pinpoint the exact place where work is needed.

Saving money, saving lives, that’s what GPS ROI is really all about. Think you can’t afford it? Think again, it’s not what it costs, it’s what you save that really counts.