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watchful eye
Onboard cameras, whether inward or outward facing, can help protect your drivers, vehicles and business
Words: Steve Banner Mark Nelson, MD of DCS Systems, likes to relate the tale of a truck driver who was negotiating a narrow, twisting, country road. He came to a particularly tight bend, slowed right down and pulled practically into the hedge to avoid getting entangled with trafic coming the other way.
Next thing he knew, a woman driver was hurtling towards him at breakneck speed. She saw his truck, lost control of her car, and ended upside down in a ield.
“Fortunately neither she nor her two children were hurt,” says Nelson. “Her husband reckoned the accident had to be the truck driver’s fault and began to make all sorts of threats about legal action.” However, the truck’s cab was itted with a Roadhawk CCTV camera and its ilm clearly showed the other driver had been travelling much too fast and that the truck had been stationary for some time before the car appeared. All threats of legal action evaporated.
Internal and external cameras have been itted to buses for several years.
The former help deter passengers from assaulting each other or the driver, and record the incident if they do. They also dissuade travellers from claiming that the driver braked too hard, causing them to fall over and hurt themselves, when no such incident occurred.
As well as providing crucial evidence if the circumstances of an accident are disputed, outward-facing cameras can deter criminals who might otherwise try to stage a road accident and then claim compensation from the bus company. They can also help the operator mount a defence if an accident is actually staged and the matter goes to court.
Because they have longer braking distances than smaller vehicles, trucks are vulnerable to car drivers who deliberately pull out in front of them and then claim whiplash injury when the vehicle hit their car. “The number of such crash-for-cash incidents appears to be rising,” says Nelson.
“One of our Roadhawk cameras mounted forward-facing can record exactly what has happened. You can it it yourself, and it costs £199 – less than the excess on most insurance policies.
“We’re hoping to launch one that will be even cheaper, at around £150,” he adds.
Recording onto an SD memory card on a four-hour loop, Roadhawk automatically
saves everything that occurred a few minutes before and a ▲ Whether they are few minutes after any impact. inwards, outwards, Telford-based Towergate Risk Solutions is so impressed rearwards or forwards, with it that it has handed 5,000 to its haulier clients to help cameras could save you them ight dubious third-party claims. Fewer pay-outs money
could, of course, ultimately result in lower premiums, and using GPS to prove exactly where and when the images were taken can be the clinching factor in a claim rebuttal.
I spy with my little eye...
“Initially, it can be the case that drivers don’t want cameras itted because they think they’re being spied on,” says Nelson. When they realise the recorded images might help them keep their licenses, and thus their livelihoods, they soon change their minds.
Side-mounted cameras can be invaluable for warding off claims by members of the public that one of your trucks bashed their parked car when you know perfectly well it did not, but cannot prove it.
Best-known for its reversing aids, Brigade Electronics can supply a truck with four cameras – one on either side at £200 each, plus one at the front and one at the rear at £100 each. “A 7 inch monitor in the cab will cost you £230, while a mobile digital recorder will set you back £850,” says marketing director Tom Brett. The images can be recorded onto an SD card or a hard drive. “The system will record up to 360 hours’ worth,” says Brett.
There is no reason why a downwards-facing camera cannot be itted to the front of a truck to record incidents involving pedestrians that might occur if the driver is inching through big-city trafic, he says. “We deal with a leet in Kent that has got 16 trucks equipped with up to seven or eight cameras apiece,” says Neil Brockbank, UK sales manager for the transport division of Synectics. “We can it six cameras plus a recording system to, say, a bin wagon for around £2,500.
“Our T1000 onboard unit can record images from as many as 16 cameras at ive to six frames a second for three or four weeks before it needs downloading.” The images captured can be used as evidence in a court of law.
Cameras can be mounted in the cab as well as externally to show what the driver was doing before a collision.
If he was clearly awake and alert with both hands on the wheel, that might go some way towards proving the accident was not his fault. If, however, he was using a hand-held mobile and rolling a cigarette at the same time, he could be more blameworthy.
Remember that such cameras cannot be concealed and employees have to be made aware of their presence. Remember, too, that notices should be placed on the vehicle alerting the public to the presence of cameras that face outwards.
Thieves can be deterred by onboard CCTV cameras, and City Link has equipped 50 of its vans with four each as a trial. One is mounted above the rear doors, one above the side door, one in the cargo area and one in the cab scanning the road ahead. Try to steal a parcel, or pull in front of the van to bring it to a halt, and your actions will be noticed.
Images are recorded onboard the van to be downloaded later, and real-time images can be streamed straight to City Link’s main control room. While many operators might feel that manual downloading is perfectly adequate for their purposes, streaming images in this way might make sound sense if drivers fear they are under threat.
City Link head of security Russell Mannix hopes to equip the company’s entire van leet with cameras because of their positive effect. “As well as improving security, they are helping to cut the number of accidents,” he says. “Fewer accidents mean less downtime, and that means customers get a better service.” ■