With more than 2 million crimes reported to South African authorities in 2018, it is essential for emergency services to use telematics to enable them to deploy resources efficiently and effectively as it is the benchmark of today’s policing.
After unemployment, South Africans rank crime among the country’s top issues. Research undertaken by the Human Sciences Research Council between 2003 and 2015 indicates that 79% of people surveyed annually by the council were dissatisfied with the government’s efforts to reduce crime in the country, with the lowest level of satisfaction recorded in 2017 (13%). Indian and white adults were less pleased with attempts to reduce crime, while females were usually less satisfied with decreases in crime than males.
Fives Ways Emergency Services Can Benefit from Leveraging Telematics
When it comes to emergency services, telematics can be beneficial to the entire organisation in the following respects:
1. Improve Efficiency and Emergency Response Time
One of the most critical variables for emergency services is to respond quickly to an incident. Using Geotab Africa’s integration with Online Intelligence can assist you to accomplish this. Building on the strengths of Geotab’s end-to-end fleet management solutions and Online Intelligence’s lead risk management software, the integration removes the complexity from emergency dispatching. So, instead of operators in emergency control rooms having to radio all vehicles to locate and dispatch the nearest vehicle, the integration enables them to simply drag and drop addresses onto a vehicle map and automatically dispatch the closest vehicle to the scene. The driver then only has to accept the address allocated to them. This not only ensures that drivers respond swiftly to emergencies but also ensures that cars are used effectively.
Read more on Geotab Africa’s integration with Online Intelligence.
2. Help Ensure Regular Maintenance Check
To get the best out of your emergency vehicles, your fleet must be maintained and properly serviced. Fleet managers can use the MyGeotab software to ensure that their vehicles follow the correct maintenance schedule. They can also use the software to detect and repair engine faults before putting the vehicle back on the road. This will assist to decrease downtime expenses and ensure that your vehicles are safe to drive.
3. Reduce Fuel and Maintenance Costs
With the current unfavourable financial climate, emergency services are facing considerable pressure to deliver great services while maintaining low operating costs. The use of telematics in this respect has proved it to be a powerful and valuable tool. Research conducted by Frost and Sullivan shows that telematics can help reduce fuel expenditure by up 25%. Therefore, through its capacity to monitor bad driving habits and tracking fuel usage, fleet managers can monitor and act against driver behaviour that adds to fuel wastage. Moreover, by ensuring that their vehicles comply with maintenance schedules, fleet managers can lower downtime costs and preempt costly repairs.
4. Improve Driver Behaviour and Reduce Collisions
Driving ambulances and other emergency vehicles poses many dangers. According to research released by the Fire Protection Research Foundation in 2011, more than 500 fatalities and 28 000 injuries were linked with ambulance crashes between 1990 and 2009. Telematics can monitor driver behaviour and report information on activities such as speeding and harsh breaking to fleet managers. They can then advise drivers on how to drive safer and prevent accidents using this data.
5. Access to Reliable Accident Data
In case of an accident, using telematics data can help you understand the events that occurred before, during, and after a crash. Through MyGeotab, you can access many different types of data that are critical to reconstructing accidents. This includes the vehicles trip history, accident and log data, speed profile, and the accelerometer and RPM graphs. Therefore, you can check the occurrences of the accident by reviewing and analysing this information. Read more about MyGeotab’s accident reconstruction feature.
Author: The Geotab Africa Team
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