Driver Training

Over the last few years there has been a general move within the fleet market to look for more detailed vehicle and driving style information than can be provided by a ‘traditional’ vehicle tracking system.
CANBus (Controller Area Network) is a data network used in many products where several applications need to communicate with each other. Within the transport industry an FMS (Fleet Management System) CANBus is used to connect to the engine management system of many commercial vehicles via an FMS adapter. It provides real time, extensive vehicle and engine management information such as engine revolutions, gears used, fuel usage and braking force. The FMS standard is supported by a number of vehicle manufactures including DAF, Iveco, MAN, Mercedes, Renault and Scania. However the FMS features actually supported vary by manufacturer and vehicle type. Where the FMS standard is not supported then a CANBus adaptor is required to interface to the CANBus.

What does it do?

CANBus data is used to generate exception reports. Should any of the data from the CANBus exceed the user defined parameters for what is deemed an acceptable style of driving, then an alert is raised enabling managers to make instantaneous decisions to improve performance.

CANBus data typically available via a vehicle tracking system includes:

• Fuel Economy
• Total Fuel Usage
• Total Distance
• Time Driving
• Idling
• Harsh Braking
• Over Revving Time
• Over Revving Distance
• Driving above 90% torque
• Average Speed
• Overspeeding Time
• Distance and time in cruise

It could also include a wide variety of additional data such as Axle weight, coolant temperature, PTO status, engine hours etc.

The TMS2 Driver Reward / Feedback module provides real-time feedback to drivers of poor driving performance in the vehicle by using Red, Amber and Green (RAG) system of small LED lights in the cab. These visual alerts to drivers are triggered when pre-defined tolerances are exceeded for incidents such as acceleration, braking, and torque band exceptions.

In addition, to the visual alerts in the cab, TMS2 provides extensive reports which gives transport managers detailed information on driver style and behaviour such as deviation from expected performance in terms of miles per gallon, idling, harsh acceleration, etc. This will allow managers to target poor driver performance based on real information.
The ability to monitor this information and subsequently educate drivers on how their driving style directly affects operating costs and transport supervisors about the performance of their fleet can make a very significant impact on the running costs of transport operations; in particular the fuel costs.

TMS2 provides the following reports for transport managers:

Reports

• Fuel data report
• Fuel Journey Summary (for a number of vehicles - fuel used by journey with distance travelled and fuel economy)
• Fuel Daily Summary (same data as for journey summary but totaled daily)
• Ranked vehicle and driver reports using CAN data –  fuel, idling, harsh braking, full throttle, green band driving,   over revving
• Driving style reports –  fuel, idling, harsh braking, full throttle, green band driving, over revving– filter on number of events, total time, location
• Fuel  - total used, mpg, filling location, quantity
• Idling time & location – CAN bus based – filter on number of events, total time, location
• PTO usage and location– filter on number of events, total time, location
• Green band driving– filter on number of events, total time
• Harsh braking and location– filter on number of events