The decision follows a successful trial that HSS claims led to fuel savings of 12% and a safer standard of driving. HSS will be installing Lightfoot in all new 3.5-tonne Mercedes Sprinter and Ford Transit vans, its Mercedes Vito vans used by fitters, and its Vauxhall Corsa vans used by sales teams.
This will mean the system will go into an expected 150 or more new vehicles this year, joining the 100 HSS vehicles that already use Lightfootas a result of the trial.
Lightfoot provides proactive, real-time feedback through visual and voice prompts to help ensure that more self-aware driving behaviour is maintained in the long term.
For the first two weeks of the Lightfoot trial, the system’s in-cab display unit was switched off to give an accurate picture of existing driving styles across the fleet. After two weeks, the in-cab display units were remotely switched on, indicating to drivers when and how they needed to modify their driving style in order to be safer and more efficient.
Using Lightfoot, the driver has two opportunities to remedy any short-term poor driving behaviour, indicated by warning prompts. When warnings are received, immediate improvement in driving style wipes the warnings and resets the gauge. Only if a third warning prompt is received will a ‘driving event’ or ‘violation’ be recorded and reported. Each week Lightfoot emails the fleet manager a table showing driver performance with no further analysis required.