A major supplier of ambulance and courier services to the NHS is using dashcam footage from Crystal Ball’s SmartCam system to help drive its road risk management and reduce the numbers of accidents and the costs involved.
Leeds-based ERS Medical runs nearly 800 drivers, technicians and nurses, completing more than 1.5 million journeys a year, and came to Crystal Ball for help with a solution to help it continuing maintaining the highest possible driving standards and operating its fleet efficiently.
The business required a telematics solution that offered a combined system of both fleet tracking and a forward-facing video camera that relayed footage in real time should there be any exceptional incident, helping it to understand incidents and improve its risk management and insurance profile.
Following the deployment of the SmartCam technology, the new programme means in-ambulance footage is reviewed between its in-house trainer and the drivers, as well as driver league tables and a full training programme for new employees, with the result that there have been fewer incidents, with vehicle downtime and running costs reduced too.
“As a patient transport service, this shows the level of excellence that ERS Medical strives for, and wants its drivers to attain, in that they sit down for one-on-one discussions with a driver trainer to review their performance,” said Crystal Ball managing director Raj Singh. “It also shows the level of detail and the wide range of information our dashcams now give fleets to manage their assets and improve driving standards.”
Steve Dixon, ERS Medical fleet driver trainer, added: “Using Crystal Ball gives us the next level of assessment, and is a tool that is key to our business. What is very important is reducing the number of incidents, but accidents happen, and what the system has achieved is reducing the cost of these accidents, and reducing driver speeds so the incidents we do have are less severe, vehicles are off the road for less time and staff are not off work due to injuries, which is of course hugely important. We walk them through the incident, for investigation purposes and for post-incident management, to improve driver awareness and safety.”
