When an accident occurs with a coach, it does more than jar the driver and passengers and put a company’s reputation at risk. It also increases insurance costs, and in the case of Falcon Coaches, they experienced a nearly 40 percent increase in premiums following a year dotted with costly driving events. That sent them looking for an innovative solution to help reduce the likelihood of collisions. Their search led them to the Lytx DriveCam safety programme, the global market leader in video telematics, which Falcon says is helping deliver reduced costs associated with claims along with other benefits that go hand-in-hand with safe driving.
The Lytx DriveCam safety programme is a comprehensive solution that combines video capture of road incidents such as hard braking or sudden swerving, data analysis of those incidents, and personalised coaching insights to improve driving behaviour to help prevent those incidents. The net result is reductions of collision-related costs by up to 80 percent.
“During 2015, we suffered from a high-cost accident claim that significantly increased our insurance costs,” said Richard Telling, managing director of Falcon Coaches. “While lowering our insurance costs is our prime motivation – and we’ve seen a substantial reduction in the increase since deploying the DriveCam programme — we’ve also experienced reductions in fuel and maintenance costs, and an overall improvement in safe driving.”
Telling added that because the DriveCam programme leverages the power of video to tell the true story of what happens when a road event occurs, it can also help protect the company against false claims, and exonerate drivers who’ve done everything right.
Since operating with the DriveCam programme, Falcon coaches hasn’t had any collisions, but they’ve had several near-misses that would have otherwise gone undetected. If not for luck and timing, Telling said, these events might have resulted in a serious collision.
Video from the DriveCam programme is also serving as an objective aid in both telegraphing the importance of safety and educating drivers why company policies exist, such as no mobile phone use or smoking in the cab.
Falcon Coaches deployed the Lytx DriveCam programme to its entire fleet, and it’s enjoying one unanticipated – but critical — benefit, said Telling.
“We have friendly and highly skilled drivers who are getting even sharper through precise DriveCam® coaching insights,” he said. “Now, instead of feeling like part of the problem, they’re an active part of the solution.”
