Beating Driver Fatigue on Long Hauls
Organising a fleet of heavy vehicles can be difficult. It’s not as simple to get from A to B when your vehicle combinations only have access to a subset of roads. The road network and route restrictions are only available to view on paper maps or via online planners but until now there have been no tools to interactively navigate the heavy vehicle driver. There are a whole range of other factors that need to be considered when you’re navigating heavy vehicles, including narrow roads, roundabouts, bridge weight limits, school zones, speed limits and permits.
The consequences of getting routes wrong can be disastrous. Look at a recent incident in Melbourne where a truck hit the Montague Street Bridge despite low clearance warnings, creating traffic chaos. This was the third vehicle to hit the bridge in three weeks. Not adhering to the correct roads also puts your drivers in danger and your business at risk of being hit with penalties for non-compliance.
With a solution that’s based on up-to-date maps that’s paired with jurisdictional information and the regulatory road network, as well as the specific configurations of each of your vehicles, you can avoid these difficulties and make route adherence simple. Start to build a bigger picture of compliant routes to and from each job, making your trips faster while keeping your business compliant and your drivers safe.
Here are three reasons to streamline your route adherence process.
Stay Compliant
Regulatory compliance dictates available road networks based on permits, heavy-vehicle attributes such as length, weight and payload type, and so forth. This means you need to map different routes for each of your trucks to avoid risks like steep hills as well as restricted areas such as bridges with a weight limit or low clearance warning. With up-to-date mapping data and spoken turn-by-turn navigation, you can be confident that your business is complying with regulations without relying on drivers to make decisions about permitted routes on-the-go. A navigation solution that works even outside of mobile coverage will relieve pressure on your drivers and allow them to follow the assigned route no matter where they are. This is essential if you want to avoid putting your business at risk of heavy penalties for non-compliance.
Keep Drivers and the Community Safe
Avoiding risk factors like weight-restricted bridges and incorrect detours also helps to improve safety for your drivers. It provides instant visual and audible alerts for drivers, even when out of communications range, when the driver has navigated off-route. It then automatically re-directs them back on-route using the next available option, according to what is most suitable for the vehicle’s mass, length, width and weight. With a specific route to follow, you can also be reassured that drivers aren’t compromising on safe driving practices to meet delivery targets or get the job done faster.
Customisable with your Routes
The same rules don’t apply to every vehicle in your fleet. Some will need to stick to strict routes, such as the B-Double network or the Crane network. Others need to comply with regulations and permits for dangerous goods. Depending on the physical characteristics of your vehicles, some trucks will be able to travel on roads that others can’t. Relying on your driver’s to interpret paper-based maps is inflexible and risky. Being able to automatically calculate the most effective route for each vehicle or allow for considerations like weight and height is the future of navigation tools.
With a route adherence solution that allows you to customise your driver’s journey to avoid risk-based infrastructure such as steep hills and sharp turns whilst accommodating vehicle configuration and combining it with the regulatory road network data, you can easily plan each journey to work for every job, customer and driver.
Providing your drivers with a smarter navigation solution to keep them on the correct roads and adhere with the road network. This empowers your drivers to make good decisions on the road by giving them the right tools, relieving pressure and ensuring your business remains compliant. Whether you’re managing five or 500 vehicles, running a safe and compliant fleet starts with running on the right roads.
Watch our latest video to learn more about SmartNav:Route or download our Transport Compliance eBook
*Please note, the functionality mentioned in this article is for SmartNav: Route, which is currently only available in Victoria. This is not to be confused with SmartNav, a turn-by-turn navigation tool.