Artificial intelligence and safety were in the spotlight at this year’s EROAD Fleet Day, with the company unveiling its new AI dashcam.

The conference, now in its 9th year, saw more than 1200 fleet industry professionals gather at Mystery Creek in Hamilton on 7 August.

Amongst a 15+ speaker lineup, keynotes included the former Prime Minister, Rt Hon Sir John Key, kiwi racing legend Greg Murphy and PwC’s Andrew Jamieson.

Organised by EROAD and sponsored by Waikato Regional Council, Fleet Day is about bringing the industry together to discuss trends and opportunities, and drive meaningful change that will positively influence fleet safety, efficiency and sustainability.

“Fleet Day has grown from a small regional event, to one of the leading fleet management events in the country,” said David Kenneson, co-chief executive officer of EROAD.

“Providing a platform for industry to build valuable relationships, share best practices, and collectively contribute to advancing industry‘s goals of safety, efficiency, and sustainability.”

Driving remains the number one cause of workplace fatalities in New Zealand. And for heavy fleet operators, the focus was undoubtedly geared towards how the industry can shift the dial on safety.

A group panel session, which featured experts from NZ police, Fonterra, NZI, EROAD and professional racing driver Greg Murphy, discussed the recent speed limit rollbacks and the potential impacts, as well as the role of technology in keeping drivers safe.

Elsewhere, the big ideas for light fleets centred around the evolving state of the EV market, and how businesses can successfully reduce vehicle emissions.

At the event, EROAD unveiled its new AI-powered dashcam, EROAD Clarity Edge.

With its advanced driver behaviour monitoring capabilities, Clarity Edge aims to help fleets strike the right balance between productivity and driver safety.

In its on-road customer testing, EROAD says that 99% of the events detected by Clarity Edge would never have been detected by traditional telematics.

Mark Heine, co-chief executive officer of EROAD, said AI is the logical next step for safety-conscious fleets.

“What we’re seeing now is fleets striving for that next exponential lift in driver safety and that is where AI comes in,” he said.

“AI has the ability to detect a far wider range of behaviours such as tailgating, fatigue or mobile use. These are known to be contributing factors to accidents, as well as inefficient driving practices”

“Fleet operators don’t have time to watch thousands of hours of on-road footage, to spot violations. By leveraging advances in AI, we’re able to do that for them. It’s a game-changer for fleet safety and productivity.”

AI can monitor the driver and the road, alerting the driver and fleet manager to potential dangers in real-time.

Clarity Edge is an advanced dashcam solution, with integrated road, driver and fatigue AI packages. By monitoring for risky behaviours and alerting drivers in real-time, Clarity Edge can help to prevent accidents or reduce their severity.

The combination of the three AI packages, together with EROAD’s existing driver behaviour and fleet management technology will enable fleet operators to identify and manage a wide range of driver behaviour, including speeding, near misses, mobile use, fatigue and distraction.

EROAD senior product manager, Soumya Puri, said Clarity Edge is a fit-for-purpose solution, having been built from the ground up as an AI camera, with state-of-the-art edge-compute processing.

“As AI models become more complex, they require more processing power from the device itself,” said Puri.

“Some of the AI-ready cameras in the market today have pretty much maxed out their processing power, limiting future development,” he said.

“Clarity Edge is at the forefront of AI camera technology, with superior processing power. We’re already looking beyond the camera’s current capabilities, towards future integrations and enhancements such as additional peripheral cameras.

“AI is rapidly advancing, and EROAD is evolving its platforms and hardware, so that customers can leverage those advances sooner rather than later, and in an intuitive way.”