SAN DIEGO, Calif. — Lytx, a leading global provider of machine vision and artificial intelligence-powered video telematics solutions for commercial and public sector fleets, today shared impressive safety improvements from Durham School Services’ full-fleet deployment of the Lytx Driver Safety program.
Durham School Services, the safety leader in student transportation, is the largest operator in the National Express, LLC. (NELLC) family.
NELLC is a North American commercial transportation firm operating 22,500 school buses and shuttles in 600 school districts. NELLC transports more than 1.2 million students each day.
Durham School Services has been in business for more than a century and completed the installation of Lytx event recorders across its full fleet of 15,000 buses in December 2018.
Since Durham School Services’ successful trial with the Lytx Driver Safety Program in 2014 and the full deployment last year, National Express is working to equip every bus in the larger National Express family with Lytx, as it has seen impressive improvements in drivers’ overall safety.
“Safety has always been at the heart of our business and we pride ourselves on going above and beyond the state requirements for driver screening and selection, training and coaching our drivers,” said Bob Ramsdell, chief safety officer at National Express, LLC., as well as a National School Transportation Association board member, and safety and security committee chair.
Ramsdell added, “The adoption of Lytx’s technology into our proactive safety management program has helped us to further strengthen our commitment to safety by addressing unsafe driving behavior before it results in an accident. Now, rather than manage safety reactively, we can better focus on proactively identifying and lowering risk for each driver.”
This enhanced approach to safety has paid off, with the company achieving strong results from June to August 2019 compared to the same time period in 2018. They experienced a significant reduction in their coachable events and risk scores.
A Holistic, Proactive Approach to Safety
Particularly with such a large and widespread fleet, Durham School Services has found the Lytx Driver Safety Program valuable in focusing on specific unsafe behaviors, assessing driver performance and in coaching employees to be better drivers. By supporting a new, standardized definition for risk and system for coaching drivers, Lytx’s program has been not only a tool to record driver safety, but the core ingredient of Durham’s holistic approach to company-wide safety management.
“Lytx technology has enabled us to notice critical details in driving behavior, like failing to come to a complete stop at stop signs,” Ramsdell said. “This sort of attention to detail allows us to identify not just when dangerous driving occurs but understand how it happens, so that we can better prevent risk before it leads to an accident. We are proud to be using Lytx to support safe driving and continue leading the industry in our commitment to safety.”
Like many transportation companies that are without video telematics, Durham School Services was only able to quantify individual risk by the number of accidents a driver had. With the Lytx Driver Safety Program, the company has created a new definition of risk, built around instances of behaviors like seatbelt violations, late responses or unsafe following distance.
Lytx combines machine vision and artificial intelligence (MV+AI) with a professional review, presenting a customized and accurate view of risk, with greater than 95 percent accuracy across more than 60 risky driving behaviors.
The result is actionable, personalized insights about each driver, including specific opportunities to improve driving habits. Working directly with Lytx to design policies around its program that would help support a strong safety culture, Durham School Services implemented a new company-wide approach to coaching drivers.
The company also designed a proprietary driver safety scorecard, which outlines each driver’s record and improvement, which enables the managers to see a full snapshot of all drivers’ performance. Managers and drivers alike have embraced this new proactive approach to safety. National Express will continue the deployment across all of the other brands in its transportation portfolio.
About Durham School Services
Durham School Services, Stock Transportation and Petermann Bus make up National Express LLC, which is headquartered in Lisle, Ill. As a leader in student transportation, NELLC is committed to exceptional safety, outstanding customer service and positive employee relations.
Durham and Petermann (United States) and Stock (Canada) operate more than 20,000 buses and serve 450 school districts in 32 states and four provinces. Our success rests with our dedicated employees who live our mission: “Getting kids to school safely, on time and ready to learn.” www.durhamschoolservices.com
About Lytx
Lytx is a leading provider of video telematics, analytics, safety, and productivity solutions for commercial and public sector fleets. Our unrivaled Driver Safety Program, powered by our best-in-class DriveCam Event Recorder, is proven to help save lives and reduce risk. We harness the power of video to help clients see what happened in the past, manage their operations more efficiently in the present, and improve driver behavior to change the future.
Our customizable services and programs span driver safety, risk detection, fleet tracking, compliance, and fuel management. Using the world’s largest driving database of its kind, along with proprietary machine vision and artificial intelligence technology, we help protect and connect thousands of fleets and more than 1 million drivers worldwide. http://www.lytx.com, @lytx on Twitter, LinkedIn, our Facebook page or YouTube channel.
