Two new vehicle alerts that track the amount of time a driver has been behind the wheel have been added to GPSTrackIt.com’s Fleet Manager vehicle tracking system. The alerts were created in response to concerns about drivers spending too much time behind the wheel, which research has shown is detrimental to a driver’s ability to focus and respond to changing road conditions.

Continuous Driving Alert: 

The Continuous Driving alert is triggered by a user-determined time threshold. The alert can be configured using 8, 10, 12, 14, and 15 hours. The alert can be assigned to a single unit, a group, or all units in a fleet. Contacts are assigned to receive the alert by email or SMS text message.

“The system uses the vehicle’s Ignition On event to begin tracking the time,” according to Eddie Bermudez, GPSTrackIt.com’s product manager. “Setting a Continuous Driving alert with an eight-hour threshold sends an alert if the vehicle is continuously driven for over 8 hours without an Ignition Off.”

Total Drive Time Alert:

In addition to the Continuous Driving alert, Fleet Manager also has a new Total Drive Time alert.

“One of the other considerations dispatchers and fleet managers have is how long, even with breaks, a driver has been behind the wheel,” continued Bermudez.  “We developed the Total Drive Time alert to calculate, for a given period, how much of that total time was spent behind the wheel.”

Like the Continuous Driving alert, the Total Drive Time alert uses an Ignition On event to start tracking the time. It provides the same time value thresholds as the Continuous Driving alert (8, 10, 12, 14, and 15 hours). However, Total Drive Time requires values for Start Time and End Time.

“The Total Drive Time alert checks for all occurrences of Ignition On events between the start time and stop time,” concluded Bermudez. “Using the Ignition Off events, Fleet Manager calculates the individual ‘legs’ of a trip, then totals the elapsed time of all drive time occurring between the Start Time and End Time parameters.”

Drowsy Driving can be Dangerous:

According to the National Sleep Foundation’s 2005 Sleep in America poll, 60% of adult drivers – about 168 million people – say they have driven while feeling drowsy and more than one-third (37% or 103 million people), have actually fallen asleep at the wheel.  

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that 100,000 police-reported crashes are the direct result of driver fatigue each year. This results in an estimated 1,550 deaths, 71,000 injuries, and $12.5 billion in monetary losses. This is a conservative estimate.