Robertson County, TN’s Board of Education has voted to added a GPS fleet solution to their fleet of over 100 school buses. This was a decision that was reached at their board meeting on November the 4th. The School Board approved a $20,000 budget amendment to allow the installation of GPS tracking and use of GPS tracking software. The decision was reached to help the county improve safety among its fleet and also to help lower expenses of the total operation of the vehicles.
Currently the county is operating 101 buses and they cover over 80 routes. They have been experiencing a few operational issues reports The Tennessean. Call centers for the School Board have recently taken calls concerning buses arriving late or speeding through neighborhoods. The Board of Education hasn’t had the ability to check on the validity of these calls to determine if anything is happening that would cause children to be put at risk, until now.
Robertson County Schools Director Mike Davis said:
“This is a very sophisticated software, it will be able to tell us where every bus is in real time on the streets, whether it is stopped on a particular place, what time it stopped – right down to the millisecond.”
Benefits
The Robertson County School Board has a lot to look forward too, with a good GPS fleet solution a device is hardwired into each vehicle, and this is the device that will be tracked. This is pretty important, their are a lot of small options or apps that allow you to track a small device or phone, but those options are easy to manipulate. Yup, the driver can easily unplug or turn off a small tracking device that isn’t hardwired.
So when you are ready to start looking at options make sure you are looking for a solution that operates as a hardwired solution, insurance providers appreciate this as well. They actually appreciate it enough to offer their customers a nice financial benefit. A lot of insurance underwriters are offering annual premium discounts because they understand that vehicle tracking helps change driver behaviors for the better.
Studies have shown, over and over again, that driver’s behaviors change and their driving practices tend to trend on the more safe side after a vehicle telemetrics system is added. This is because drivers know their actions are being tracked and they can easily be critiqued if they do something unsafe or against company policy.
Eliminating unnecessary idling will be very simple for the Robertson County School Board too, from now on if a driver exceeds a predetermined length of time for idling then that driver and time frame will be exposed by an alert via text, email or report.
If you are interested in learning more about a quality GPS solution for your fleet please contact Driver Watch Systems today to learn how we can help, just click here.
