GPS tracks stolen ambulance
Well I thought this was interesting because of several factors.
The first of course was that the ambulance company recovered a very valuable asset quickly, and with no damage. Without some sort of tracking system they might have never recovered it. With a ‘theft only’ system such as LoJack the recovery would have depended upon a police car with the special LoJack receiver on board and a cop would have had to have time to follow the signal until he came upon the ambulance.
When you invest in a real system where you own the information you are paying for, you can do so much more. In fact, if theft poses real problem the system can be designed with a dispatch controlled shut down switch to allow management to literally stop it in it’s tracks in need be.
The second issue is idling. yes, it’s an excuse that the “bus” be left idling in cold weather or hot weather to run the climate control. But does it have to be left idling with the doors open … waiting for joy-riding teens, escaped bank robbers or who knows who else to ‘borrow’ it? The driver could carry a spare key and lock the door you know, it doesn’t take that much fore-thought. Better yet, by a long chalk would be an APU - (Axillary Power Unit) like the ones currently being rolled out on long-haul trucks to avoid idling all night in truck stops.
The ambulance business has long been a “savings lives costs money, how long would you care to live: kind of operation, but in the days of 2 to 3 dollar gas and massive pollution problems the company could do worse than to plan for the future. Idling is a hidden waste that costs American business millions of gallons of fuel per year and nearly all of it is completely unnecessary. It goes on mainly for one reason … business owners don’t know how much idling their fleets do and they don’t have the data to determine which drivers are at fault, so the whole problem gets swept under the rug.
A good GPS system can save in many ways that most of us don’t think of when we first consider tracking.