Drowsy and distracted driving claims 6,000 lives, 500,000 injuries and $175 billion in cost each year. Most of this is preventable.
“We felt as the leader in video safety that it was our job – we were compelled to innovate to try and use all the leverage and capabilities that we have to go after this problem,” said Brandon Nix, chief executive officer of Lytx during a press conference at the American Trucking Associations’ annual Management Conference and Exhibition in Philadelphia on Oct. 18.
After four years of development, Lytx announced the launch of a new ActiveVision service that identifies specific behavior patterns indicative of distracted and drowsy driving, including lane departures and following distances, then uses video to help pinpoint potential causes to help fleets improve driver safety performance and mitigate accident occurrences.
ActiveVision uses the new AutoTune feature that minimizes the likelihood of false alerts through complex pattern recognition algorithms, computer vision and machine learning technologies that work together to create a comprehensive view of what’s happening and how potentially dangerous situations can be mitigated. (Scroll down to see video demonstration of ActiveVision).
ActiveVision includes in-vehicle alerts when conditions require greater driver attention, in-vehicle prompts when immediate action is recommended and post-drive video-based coaching to help drivers improve their skills in all situations.
The new service is available for select Lytx DriveCam clients immediately on the company’s ER-SV2 fifth-generation event recorder. ActiveVision will be available industry-wide in January 2016 but is not backwards compatible with existing DC3P and earlier model DriveCam devices.
“The most sophisticated technology in the cab will always be the human operator,” said Brandon Nixon, Lytx chairman and CEO. “So we created a system to augment the natural strengths of the human driver that leverages vast amounts of data, understands what that data means – and what’s important, and how that data can be used to make the roads safer for everyone. The ActiveVision service is the latest innovation from nearly two decades of research and development, and the insights from expert human review of more than 28 billion miles driven.”
