With over 250,000 drivers falling asleep at the wheel every day in the USA, a Canadian company has announced that it is in the initial stage of a pilot program for the use of its proprietary Driver Alertness Detection System (DADS) with 26 trucking companies in the USA and Canada. InterCore Research Canada (IRC), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Intercore Inc, says that in addition to these 26 companies, it expects to begin working with an additional 44 trucking companies during the first quarter of this year. The trucking companies involved in the program operate more than 200,000 commercial vehicles across North America. Designed around IRC’s proprietary alertness detection technologies, DADS is a cloud-based service that monitors a driver’s state of alertness in real-time to reduce the risk of road accidents caused by drowsiness and fatigue. Using the data collected by the DADS-certified camera, the service helps drivers determine if they are alert enough to drive. The camera captures information from the driver’s face, which are then analyzed by the DADS software. When DADS detects that the driver’s state of alertness is declining, audible and visual signals warn the driver up to two hours before reaching a critical state, helping to prevent accidents by highlighting a potential problem; often before they even realize that the situation is getting dangerous.
In commercial environments, such as the transportation industry, fatigue is recognized as the main cause of accidents. Fatigue causes a loss of alertness, poor judgment, and slower reaction times in drivers, making it a safety issue of the highest priority. In addition to the on-board driver alerts, DADS generates continuous reports on mileage, geolocation, driving patterns and driver fatigue, with real-time data linked to DADS Cloud, making it an invaluable tool for commercial vehicle fleet administrators. The company says discussions are also progressing with leading European insurance companies, as well as European, Asian, and Australian fleet operators. Based on the expressed needs of these industries, modifications and adjustments to the company’s software and hardware are being developed to further adapt the product to best service clients on a global scale.
One of the biggest modifications to the system is the development of a ‘smart camera’, eliminating the need for a smartphone to operate DADS. This is being done to accommodate a rapidly expanding trend in the transport industry to ban the presence of a cellphone in the driver cabin. InterCore is also adding new features to its Cloud based services. Additional telemetric features will now be included to assist in enhancing driver and corporate efficiency and safety, such as driver pattern assessment and sleep management programs. These new features are expected to be released during the second quarter of 2015 and will be available to assist client companies in Asia, North America, Australia and Europe.
