Evolving video tech to solve the toughest fleet problems

It’s like a mantra that loops continuously through the minds of transit operators — safety, security, safety, security. These two broad areas of concern remain at the forefront of an operator’s daily thinking as they take people to and from the places they need to be.

Video technology has come a long way in helping identify and bring definition to safety and security issues, which makes them easier to address and mitigate. But as much as CCTV has been a welcome tool in the fleet operator’s arsenal, it can be a hassle to manage, and a burden on operations to search and locate that one clip when and where it’s needed.

Video telematics, which captures video triggered by a driving event like hard braking or a sudden swerve, has made obtaining critical clips a bit more convenient, serving up video that’s associated with operator behavior, and providing data-backed insights that will help an operator improve. That data — like time of day, location, speed, etc. — captured from an event adds a layer of actionable information and, over time, helps managers identify important trends.
But picking up and delivering passengers safely and without incident isn’t always within an operator’s control. There are trips and falls (boarding and exiting the bus), criminal activity, changing road conditions, and so on.

Think about the costliest incident in your agency’s history. Now, think about how different your incident management process would have been if you had a time machine to transport you back to the precise moment when the incident happened. What would you look for? What questions would you like to have answered?

Depending on the nature of the incident, you may wish to ask: Did the bus remain at rest while that passenger boarded? How was the bus positioned? Were the interior lights functional at the point of the assault? What were the weather and road conditions like? Was the operator alert and engaged when entering the intersection? Was a proper pre-trip inspection performed?

Lytx, the company that makes the DriveCam video telematics program, has a new program called Lytx Video Services to help you answer these questions — and so many more — with incredible efficiency. It works in conjunction with the market-leading Lytx DriveCam safety program to link up to 12 third-party NTSC or PAL CCTV cameras for maximum visibility in and around the vehicle.

Lytx Video Services has an on-board DVR that holds approximately 100 hours of video with on-demand access to that video, both in the moment, and up to a week afterward.

Recorded video can be organized with tags that are associated with hardwired triggers — like when a ramp is deployed — or cloud-based triggers from third-party software, like collision avoidance systems. Finding video with tags makes it easy to search and find the desired video clip. For example, if a user needs to find all of the passenger door activities that took place during a 15-minute period to determine if a slip and fall claim was valid, they would simply search the video by the door-open tag during the designated time frame and select the camera angles that would show exactly what happened. Clip length is completely customizable up to 20 minutes per clip.

That means managers can get to the bottom of the story faster than ever.
If you’d like to see the next generation in video technology to help protect your transit fleet and improve operational efficiency, come see a demonstration of Lytx Video Services during the APTA EXPO at Booth #3303.