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Many people who drive for work are continuing to leave their homes to ensure that essential supplies and services reach those in need during this difficult time. Unfortunately, trucker fatalities have been on the rise for a number of years, and with a higher demand being put on fleets during the current crisis we are facing globally, the use-case for safety suites has continued to spread. Now customers are demanding OEMs offer safety systems, or they may take their business elsewhere.

In previous posts, we’ve looked at the difference between RADAR and LiDAR, and between RADAR and ultrasonic sensors. While there are significant differences between these three types of sensors, they have one thing in common: They are all used to increase safety by identifying and locating both still and moving obstacles relative to the path of a vehicle. RADAR sensors do this by emitting radio waves. LiDAR uses high frequency laser light. Ultrasonic sensors emit high-pitched sound waves.

If you’ve been following the news on self-driving cars, you may have noticed that many of the autonomous vehicle makers are using LIDAR (Light Imaging Detection And Ranging) for on-board object detection. For many autonomous automobile applications, LIDAR is a better choice than the other commonly used object-detection technology, RADAR (Radio Detection And Ranging). But when it comes to high-quality, affordable object detection that needs to stand up to rough environments, RADAR is a wise choice. Here’s why:

In 1799, French army engineers discovered the Rosetta Stone, a slab of rock that created a revolution in archeology by helping Egyptologists crack the code of hieroglyphics. Today’s modern fleet owners, insurers, and government officials would love to come across a similar tell all to help them crack the code of vehicle crash costs. Instead, they are faced with a dizzying array of agencies, measurement standards, and definitions that make it nearly impossible to answer a critical, but complex, question: How much, on average, does it cost when the operator of a fleet vehicle gets into a crash with another person or thing?

For decades, fleets have considered the staggering cost of collisions as unavoidable as death and taxes. These days, as new technologies alert drivers to potential collisions—and, increasingly, take complete control of the vehicle to avoid the collision altogether—fleet owners may well be wondering if there will come a day when collision costs become marginal.

When it comes to fleet safety, technology giveth and it taketh away. The good news for fleet managers trying to improve safety is that with fleet telematics becoming more available and less expensive, capturing all manner of fleet operations data is becoming vastly easier. But as technology makes life easier in one dimension, it creates new challenges as managers assemble teams to improve fleet safety.

New highway regulations in Texas have fleet managers looking for ways to equip specific heavy haul trucks with roll-stability systems and blind spot protection. The new regulations, as laid out in Texas Senate Bill 1524, address heavier oversize and overweight intermodal vehicles that carry oceangoing or international trade containers within 30 miles of a port of entry or international bridge. SB 1524 mandates that roll-stability systems and blind spot protection be installed on these vehicles as a precondition of receiving an operating permit from the Texas Department of Transportation.

The world would come to a grinding halt without utility workers and the companies they work for. With all utility companies and workers have to worry about, safety priorities for vehicles and drivers have a tendency to get pushed down the list.

Following a recent tradeshow, conversations revolved around street sweepers and the hazards that come with them. In an effort to highlight the safety issues that are associated with this common piece of equipment, we wanted to take a moment to draw attention to the safety solutions that are available.

If you have been driving for ten or more years, you are no doubt amazed to see the endless stream of driver assistance technologies being added to passenger cars. You can almost hear your parents grumbling, “In my day, people actually had to pay attention to where they were going!” Such mundane necessities are quickly becoming a thing of the past as drivers are learning to rely more and more on the technology that surrounds them and less and less on their own faculties. If drivers are safer as a result of new technology, then it’s all for the better. But, as a fleet manager, there is more at stake than safely getting from point A to point B.