Lytx Upgrades Video-Based Safety System That Monitors Driver Fatigue, Distraction
Lytx Inc. said it is upgrading its DriveCam video-based safety system with a new service aimed at helping fleets prevent distracted and fatigued driving.
The company said its Active-Vision service, set for industrywide release in January, uses onboard sensors and analytics to detect driving behaviors such as lane departures and following too closely — prime indicators that the driver is distracted or drowsy.
Based on that information, the system issues audible alerts to the driver in real time and also provides feedback for driver coaching after the fact, the San Diego-based technology supplier said.
“The most sophisticated technology in the cab will always be the human operator,” CEO Brandon Nixon said. “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.
ActiveVision uses new hardware equipped with technology that can detect road markings and the environment in front of the truck.
That service works in conjunction with the video feeds and accelerometer data that Lytx already captures.
ActiveVision is designed to reveal patterns in driver behavior to support fleets’ efforts to improve safety, said Liz Eller, senior manager of product marketing.
“The technology shows us not only the individual lane departures and points of following, but also the trend happening over time,” she said.
ActiveVision will utilize Lytx’s new ER-SV2 event recorder, the company’s fifth-generation device, which includes the new lane-departure and following-distance monitoring capabilities.
The device records video both outside and inside the cab with forward- and driver-facing cameras and includes accelerometer and gyro sensors to capture additional driver-performance information. It also can collect data from the truck’s engine control module and third-party onboard technologies, and offers Bluetooth and Ethernet connectivity.
ActiveVision incorporates a feature called AutoTune, which is designed to reduce the likelihood of false alerts by continuously fine-tuning its
pattern-recognition algorithms based on reviews of captured events.
To implement the ActiveVision service, current DriveCam users will need to upgrade to the new hardware, Eller said. However, Lytx will continue to offer its DC Enterprise and DC Protect programs using the current event recorder, she added.
Lytx was set to demonstrate the new service this week at the American Trucking Associations’ Management Conference & Exhibition in Philadelphia.
Frost & Sullivan said in a June report that Lytx holds about 70% of the global video-safety market for trucks, which the research firm expects to quadruple from about 310,000 units in service in 2014 to about 1.25 million in 2021.
