Reducing Liabilities With GPS
One of the biggest worries for every business is that an employee will find themselves in a situation where an accident of some sort happens. Accidents on the job can happen for a number of different reasons, but when they occur in company vehicles it can create serious liability issues for a business. Especially, if someone is significantly injured. This is the reason why preventing accidents before they occur is paramount, and thankfully one security tool known as the GPS tracker is helping to bring that accident prevention.
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Improving Workplace Safety With Technology
Workplace Accident Stories
Delivering equipment and other miscellaneous loads of material was all in an average day’s work for Caleb Cartee, the owner, and operator of an 18-wheeler. However, what he never could have expected one early morning occurred when a school bus full of young children made an erratic driving maneuver, cutting in front of his 18-wheeler at an unsafe speed. The bus driver’s actions almost resulted in a major vehicular accident on highway 21. When asked about the near-accident, Cartee said, ” I was in total shock that the bus driver would be so irresponsible while transporting so many children.” He also explained, “Knowing that I would have been considered at fault if an accident had occurred, and having to live the rest of my life with the thought that my vehicle resulted in the death of an untold amount of children still haunts me.” Thankfully, almost all school buses now carry GPS tracking systems, and the data may bring the truth to the surface.
After Cartee phoned school district officials and explained the events that unfolded, he was not thrilled by the response he received. The school official stated he interviewed the bus driver, regarding Cartee’s story, and the bus driver declared that nothing happened that morning that was out of the ordinary. Cartee was frustrated by the position the school district was taking, explaining that parents should be aware of any potential bad driving habits by bus drivers. However, the one positive that came from the conversation was that the school official asserted that he would remove the GPS tracker that was installed upon the school bus and review the tracking system data for anomalies in the bus driver’s story.
GPS car tracking devices provide accurate historical records of driving travels, and it is very common for most school buses to be equipped with some form of a vehicle tracker.
What Should Parents Think?
Almost all school buses have GPS vehicle tracking equipment monitoring their every movement, however, how advantageous can the GPS vehicle tracker be if nobody is viewing the data on a consistent basis?
After hearing Cartee’s story, many parents began wanting to review the GPS tracker data themselves. This situation sparked questions from many parents, such as:
Should parents be allowed to review a tracking device that was purchased with taxpayer money? Should all buses be equipped with dash cams with GPS to provide both speed and visual data in the case of an accident? While a bus is picking up and dropping off children, should parents be allowed to watch the GPS tracking system?
If parents were allowed to have access to a bus’ GPS tracker, then the parents would be able to know the exact moment their children were picked up.
Top 5 Reasons Businesses Use GPS Trackers
1) Customer Service: Many people probably heard a cable company tell them that their appointment date will be between 8:00-a.m.-3:00p.m. on a specific date, consuming the customer’s entire day as they are forced to patiently wait for the technician to arrive. Companies that utilize real-time GPS tracking are able to avoid these types of customer service disasters as they are able to locate any company vehicle in the field, allowing the company to provide customers more accurate and arrival and departure times. Real-time vehicle tracking provides the ultimate fleet management solution for businesses.
2) Insurance: A vehicle tracking system provides a business with the ability to investigate the driving habits of an employee if that person was ever involved in a car accident. Unsafe driving can cost a business, and if an employee was ever involved in anything from a fender-bender to a more serious car accident the company would have the ability to access daily driving activity reports from a GPS tracker to check for discrepancies in a story.
Businesses also receive breaks on insurance premiums when they outfit their fleet of vehicles with real-time GPS devices because the technology also can serve as a theft-recovery solution.
3) Maintenance & Repairs: Vehicle tracking devices record all driving-related information, making it easy for a fleet manager to know when a specific vehicle needs an oil tune-up, transmission service, or radiator flush.
4) Accounting Tax-Deductible Mileage: Accounting and documenting tax-deductible mileage use to be a chore for many businesses, but with real-time trackers and data loggers now able to do all the cumbersome leg work for a business calculating that information has never been so simple. Businesses that have put in place a GPS tracking system program get back 73% more money back on the average from the government for mileage write-offs.
1) Employee Accountability: One of the hardest things for an employer to do is fire an employee, but that process can be very easy when there is sufficient evidence of poor performance and moon-lighting. Holding employees accountable for performance is something every employer must do and that is why many employers are turning to GPS tracking devices. When a boss can access the whereabouts of an employee at anytime or access where they have been it makes it impossible for an employee to successfully get away with driving poor routes, moon-lighting, or running personal errands while on the clock.
Distracted Driving Policy For Employees
Preventing Texting While Driving
A recent study shows that employee texting is out of control. Texting among adults is past the epidemic stage and has become a full-blown mass obsession. However, when employees operating company vehicles are texting and driving it can be a potential liability disaster. The average person is sending approximately 1500 text messages per month, and anyone of those SMS messages sent while driving could result in an accident.
Texting addictions can seem a little juvenile, but they can also be very dangerous when paired up with driving. Every day someone dies in a motor vehicle accident because of distracted driving, and there is nothing more distracting than sending and receiving text messages while operating a vehicle. Distracted driving has become such a hot-topic issue that celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey have even created programs aimed at ending distracted driving.
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Matthew is a freelance writer who is passionate about technology, music, photography, and decentralized finance.
