Tag Archives: speeding

Enforce Speed Limits on Drilling Sites

Easily Comply with Speed Limits on Drilling Sites

Speed SignSpeeding on drilling sites is unsafe and expensive. Most of the roads on a drilling site are unpaved and  not safe at high speeds. To ensure safety drilling companies enforce speed limits on their properties. They tend to use security companies to monitor the speed of trucks operating on their sites. The companies often enforce compliance through fines and sometimes removal from the well site. As a contractor you are responsible for your driver’s behavior. Unfortunately, it is difficult to enforce safety rules such as speed limits when you are not in the vehicle. The next best thing is to use a GPS tracking system to remotely monitor the speed of your fleet.

GeofenceCreate A Geofence to Monitor Speed Limits

One of the best tools a GPS tracking system provides is the geofence. A geofence is a virtual fence or boundary that can be used to monitor the activity of your fleet on a drilling site or any other location. You can set a speed limit within the geofence to make sure your fleet does not violate that rule. If the rule is broken an alert can be sent directly to a mobile phone or email. The violation is also recorded in a report so it can be retrieved at any time.

The Eagle Ford Shale encompasses a large section of South Texas. It spans 30 counties and is considered the most active shale play in the world. As of April 19, 2014, there are 267 rigs running. With such a large area to cover you need to have the right geofence tools. Make sure the GPS tracking system you are considering has the ability to draw polygon geofences and can import geofences from Google Earth or other sources.

Geofence speedGPS Tracking Makes Compliance Easy

A good GPS tracking system can help make compliance easier and more efficient. There are many rules that have to be enforced and speeding is one of them. One of the most basic functions of a reliable GPS system is monitoring the speed of a vehicle. The system should report the speed and location of the vehicle. You should also have the ability to set a speed alert so you can monitor unsafe driving.

Efficient Fleets is a logistics company that uses GPS tracking and mapping to make your fleet safer, more efficient, and less expensive. For more information please contact us.

Speeding – Major Factor in Fleet Safety

When your driver gets behind the wheel of one of your vehicles you place the safety of your fleet in his or her hands. There are many factors that can influence safe driving, such as speed, unfamiliar roads, vehicle maintenance to name a few. However, in this blog we are going to focus on how speed affects safety and how GPS tracking can help you reduce speeding. We will cover the other factors in subsequent blogs.

Speeding is a major cause of accidents in the United States. In fact in Texas speeding is even worse than the nation as a whole. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, in 2010 speeding was a factor in 39% of all fatal crashes in Texas compared to 31% for the U.S. as a whole.

There are many reasons why your driver may be speeding: late for the next stop, likes to drive fast, bored, pressure from the boss. One of the most important ways to control how fast your employees drive is the company culture. A culture that encourages your employees to take unnecessary risks to get to the next stop is rewarding unsafe behavior. Safe driving should be encouraged by management at all levels so drivers understand what is really important.

Along with company culture good monitoring tools, such as GPS tracking, can help make sure all employees drive safely. A GPS tracker installed in your company’s vehicles can tell you: the speed and location of all your vehicles. With that information you can identify which drivers consistently drive too fast. GPS tracking provides many benefits and one of it’s most important is helping fleets operate more safely.

All GPS trackers record the speed of the vehicle. The speed with the location and date and time are sent to a tracking website where you can see how fast your fleet was moving. A good GPS tracking system will provide you with different tools to help monitor the speed of your vehicles.

Alerts

Speeding alerts can be set so that the GPS tracking system can record when a vehicle was going too fast. An alert can be sent immediately to an email or a mobile phone if you want to. You can set a speed threshold that is the trigger for the alert. When the vehicle goes above that threshold you will receive an alert.

Reports

Speed reports will show you when, where, and how fast a vehicle was driving. The information can be displayed as chart or graph or in a spreadsheet form. Charts and graphs are helpful in identifying very quickly which drivers are speeding more than others.

Maps

The GPS tracking map should display the location with a unique icon of where the speeding alert occurred. You can identify very quickly where your drivers were speeding. If your driver gets a speeding ticket and you want to verify his or her activity the map can help you.

Drivers

If more than one driver operates a vehicle on a frequent basis you will want to identify accurately who was driving. There are several ways to identify who was driving. One way is to create a driver in the GPS tracking software and manually assign that driver to the vehicle he or she is driving. Another method is to install a driver ID system that identifies automatically who was driving. A driver ID system requires additional equipment to be installed besides the GPS tracker. There are several options for driver ID systems. We will cover those in a later blog. In the mean time please visit our Accessories page for some driver ID options.

I hope this blog provided some good information on the importance of speeding in keeping your fleet safe. GPS tracking is a simple, cost effective tool that can help you keep your drivers, assets, and others safe. If you have any questions on how GPS tracking can help make your fleet safer please contact us.

How to Send Alerts to Your Mobile Phone

To send an alert to your mobile phone via text message you will need to send it as an email. All you need is a mobile phone number and the email address for your mobile phone provider. Below is a list of the most common ones.

Example: 2102224444@txt.att.net

AT & T            [10_digit_number]@txt.att.net

T-Mobile        [10_digit_number]@tmomail.net

Verizon           [10_digit_number]@ vtext.com

Spring              [10_digit_number]@messaging.sprintpcs.com

Mobile Phone Alert

How to Setup Speed Alerts

Setting up a speed alert is very easy to do. This is one of the most important tasks for improving the safety of your fleet and reducing fuel costs. Please follow the steps below to setup a speed alert in the Fleet Management System.

An alert can be created for an entire group or just an individual item. The steps below will show you how to create one for an entire group.

1. From the Dashboard click on the Group name where you want to setup the alert. You should now see the Group Editor.

Click on Group Name

2. Click on Setup Alerts.

Setup alerts

3. Click on Excessive Speed to select the speeding alert for configuration.

Excessive Speed

4. Set the Speed Threshold in MPH and the alert schedule. When a vehicle goes above the threshold an alert will be recorded. The schedule allows you to control when alerts can be triggered. The example in the picture sets the schedule for 24 hours per day, 7 days a week.

Set Speed Threshold

5. Select Show Message Icon from Display Type drop down menu. This will display a special icon on the map where the speeding alert occurred. Choose the icon you want from the Alert Image drop down menu.

Alert Icon

6. As an option you can have the alert sent to your email or mobile phone. Enter the email address or the phone number in the Email Address box.  To send the alert to your phone as a text message please see this blog post.

Alert Email

7. Click on Save Alert.

Save Alert

Now your alert is ready to go. If a vehicle or asset goes above the speed threshold you set in step 4 an alert will be recorded. If you set  up an email address or phone number that alert will be delivered to you. You can also see all the recorded alerts in the Alert reports, on the Tracking map, and on the Dashboard.