Richard Perham, managing director of Airmax Remote, on why it’s more important now, than ever before, that the emergency services should adopt vehicle telematics to deliver greater efficiencies and improve the protection of personnel.

Airmax Remote has been a valued partner for a number of the UK’s police forces for the last 12 years plus

In the current financial climate, emergency services are facing considerable pressure to deliver improved service while maintaining low operating costs and this has been made more difficult in the face of increasing public demand and enhanced scrutiny over service delivery and the conduct of personnel.

No doubt this pressure is set to continue, with a renewed drive for efficiency, together with the need for improved service. Although it is fair to say this applies across all aspects of the emergency services it is particularly prevalent in the provision and use of emergency service vehicles, so it is vital that emergency services vehicles are fully operational and accurately maintained to the highest standards.

In such a high-pressured fleet environment, telematics can help emergency vehicles respond quickly and safely with complete visibility, thereby delivering robust duty-of-care for personnel and the public alike. In addition, Telematics also delivers a range of benefits for the emergency services provider from improved fuel management to improved driver behavior and improved operational fleet efficiency.

Emergency services that implement telematics achieve a better understanding of vehicle utilisation – a key part of an emergency services’ day-to-day work. Telematics delivers improved visibility of each vehicle ensuring identifying the accurate location of a vehicle and less time wasted in attending an emergency. Telematics also plays a big part in how emergency services are able to analyse fleet data and to ensure the best use of vehicles, in particular having the ability to address under-utilised vehicles and thereby make adjustments to the fleet and achieve substantial savings through a reduction in mileage and accurate deployment of vehicles.

Driving ambulances and other emergency vehicles poses many dangers. According to research released by the Fire Protection Research Foundation, more than 500 fatalities and 28,000 injuries were linked with ambulance crashes between 1990 and 2015. Telematics can monitor driver behaviour and report information on activities such as speeding and harsh breaking to fleet managers. They can then advise drivers on how to drive safer and prevent accidents using this data.

Data reported from the vehicle can be ingested and integrated with a series of web services. Dependent on your fleet profile and operational requirements, vehicle information such as location data can be in real time processed to any M2M (machine to machine) method. Command and Control team utilise this information to consolidate systems, allowing them to utilise uninterrupted location data from the vehicle, as well as using radios for police officer locations.

Research conducted by Frost and Sullivan shows that telematics can help reduce fuel expenditure by up 25%. Therefore, through its capacity to monitor bad driving habits and tracking fuel usage, fleet managers can monitor and act against driver behaviour that adds to fuel wastage. Moreover, by ensuring that their vehicles comply with maintenance schedules, fleet managers can lower downtime costs and pre-empt costly repairs.

Reporting enables a raft of journey and event data to be logged and analysed including ‘blues and twos’ reports – incorporating the type of blue light mode the vehicle is operating under – all of which give time and location for on/off operation, together with speed, revs, acceleration and braking. Information is transmitted to a secure server in real time.

The head of transport at the UK’s fourth largest police force believes others will follow its lead and fit vehicles with sophisticated telematics devices in a bid to manage driver behaviour, improve fleet efficiency and drive down costs.

Steve Thompson, head of transport at West Yorkshire Police, which covers 780 square miles including Bradford, Leeds and Wakefield, has equipped 600 of the force’s 1,100 vehicles with telematics devices from Airmax Remote.

Thompson comments: “The introduction of telematics has proved very positive for West Yorkshire Police with no downside. We have had a lot of interest from other police forces and I believe more constabularies will equip vehicles with telematics devices.”

For over 12 years, Airmax Remote has been a valued partner for a number of the UK’s police forces. Recently Airmax Remote launched ‘Airmax Response’ which has been designed to provide the functionality that the UK emergency services demand from a telematics provider.

Mick Trosh, a transport safety consultant, adds: “Over the last 10 years, telematics technology has taken significant steps forward, adapting to the changing operational landscape of the emergency services and consequently the benefits and savings delivered by telematics is more compelling for the emergency services sector than ever before.”

Dr Julie Gandolfi of Driving Research Ltd says: “Telematics data from emergency vehicles is an essential tool in enabling driver risk management interventions to be targeted where they are most urgently needed. Data from telematics systems can be used to identify drivers whose day-to-day driving behaviours show elevated risk, before that risk develops into an incident. Behavioural interventions can then be deployed exactly where they are needed, to increase those drivers’ awareness of their risk and assist them in developing safer strategies and implement continuous self-evaluation in future.”

The key differentiator of Airmax Response is the integration of the incident data recorder (IDR) within the telematics device as ‘a one box solution’. Notoriously, obtaining reliable date from the IDR has proved costly and a drain on resources, so to have instant access to the IDR in the event of an accident is a big game changer for the emergency services in protecting their employees and their assets.

Airmax Response also monitors speed, over-revving, idling, and harsh acceleration and braking. It also automatically logs each vehicle journey to an individual driver ID, via a contactless RFID proximity reader that can be controlled by a whitelist for preauthorised cards, to limit the risk of vehicles being started by non-authorised personnel.

In conclusion, the need for an effective telematics system is more pressing than ever. Whilst many telematics providers claim they can meet the requirements of the emergency services, in practice, this has proven not always to be the case. Airmax Remote through their work with the emergency services is committed to this process and will continue to deliver robust telematics solutions that not only drive efficiencies, but also protect personnel.