New Data Shows Lytx AI Captures Significantly More Driver Distraction, Enables Safer Roadways

- Lytx shows its advanced machine vision and artificial intelligence (MV+AI) technology is capturing 133% more cell phone use

- Abacus Plumbing, Air Conditioning & Electrical and Ozark Motor Lines among fleets using MV+AI-backed risk detection from Lytx

SAN DIEGO– July 14, 2020 – Today Lytx^® announced new data on how their machine vision and artificial intelligence (MV+AI)-powered technology, used to detect and alert drivers and fleets of distractions and risky behaviors in real-time, has enabled fleets and empowered drivers to identify and correct significantly more risk, both inside and outside of the vehicle.

Lytx, a leading global provider of video telematics, analytics, productivity and safety solutions for commercial, public sector and service fleets, has been honing its award-winning, superior MV+AI solution for more than a decade. The company first released MV+AI in 2015 to help fleets identify risky driving behavior like unsafe following distance. The most recent enhancements, launched this past February, include inside-view triggers, like cell phone use, powered by MV+AI to help solve the epidemic of distracted driving, a problem that costs approximately $175 billion a year in the United States. 

“Lytx’s advanced MV+AI solutions make it easier for fleets to get started with and benefit from AI,” said Sathya Kabirdas, Research Director, Frost & Sullivan. “Lytx is at the forefront of machine vision- and artificial intelligence-based video telematics for commercial vehicle fleets. The company has consistently delivered innovative technology in advance of the market and moved the space from speculating about the potential of MV+AI to deploying it at a scale that is helping transform safety and productivity for fleets of all sizes, across all industry segments.”

Enthusiasm for Lytx’s proven MV+AI solution is running high with current customers and penetration is growing rapidly amongst fleets. Since launching its inside view triggers in February 2020, over 1,500 more fleets have deployed the company’s MV+AI-backed driver safety solution, actively and accurately detecting high-risk behaviors among their drivers in real-time, while moving toward a safer and more productive future that empowers drivers.

“While many providers claim to have AI, it is really important to ask the right questions about the quality and breadth of their offering because many providers only capture one or two specific behaviors and do so using unreliable or limited datasets,” said Dave Riordan, Lytx executive vice president and general manager, enterprise business. “This can lead to a barrage of false positives that result in inaccurate data and lead to trust issues with drivers, while increasing the risk of missing the real thing. We are pleased to see so many fleets adopting our MV+AI technology, enabling them to detect and reduce cell phone use and other high-risk driving behaviors before they result in a collision – or worse.”

Lytx MV+AI: Unprecedented Visibility Inside and Outside of the Vehicle

Lytx technology is validated and backed by the largest and fastest-growing driving database of its kind, which grows by more than 140,000 new driving events each day, further training and improving its algorithms. This data is incorporated into a system that is able to deliver greater than 95% accuracy across 60 behaviors – unmatched by competitors in the industry.

Compared to other video telematics, in which event capture is triggered by accelerometers alone, Lytx MV+AI enables fleets and empowers drivers to identify and correct significantly more risk, both inside and outside of the vehicle, including:

• No seat belt — identified 397% more
• Unsafe following distance — identified 332% more
• Incomplete stop – identified 243% more
• Food or drink — identified 173% more
• Failure to stop — identified 188% more
• Handheld device — identified 133% more

Lytx calculates that 35% of all near collisions captured by its devices involve one or more of these behaviors. This underscores both their prevalence and the risk they present, and in turn, the power of proactively capturing these habits – enabling driver self-correction in real time and the potential for deeper coaching in the future.

Early Adopters Reap Benefits of Lytx MV+AI: Ozark Motor Lines and Abacus Plumbing, Air Conditioning & Electrical

Ozark Motor Lines

Ozark Motor Lines, a Memphis-based leading truckload carrier, prides itself on its family-owned history and open lines of communication with its drivers. Working with customers including FedEx and International Paper, Ozark Motor Lines has a strong brand reputation and was looking to take their safety culture to the next level. That commitment led the team to deploy 760 Lytx event recorders with the new enhanced MV+AI risk triggers across its entire fleet earlier this year.

"When it comes to distracted driving, we knew that behaviors like cell phone use were far more prevalent in our own fleet than we could prove,” said Patrick Landreth, vice president of safety and human resources at Ozark Motor Lines. “Since activating the machine vision and artificial intelligence capabilities within the Lytx Driver Safety Program, we’re seeing a fuller and more accurate picture of risk in our fleet and are able to bring our drivers’ attention to these risky habits both in real time and during a coaching session if one is needed. With distracted driving behaviors happening at such a high rate in the U.S., I can’t overstate the value of identifying these habits and bringing them to the surface, empowering our drivers to correct them before they result in a collision.”

The issue of distracted driving goes beyond traditional trucking fleets; new Lytx customer Abacus Plumbing, Air Conditioning & Electrical has a fleet comprised of light-duty vehicles, including sprinter vans and pick-up trucks. The fleet has deployed both the Lytx Driver Safety Program, including MV+AI-powered risk triggers, and Lytx Fleet Tracking. With both aspects of Lytx’s fleet management solution together in one platform, Abacus has been able to evaluate its business from multiple angles and consider how to prioritize productivity and safety while maintaining top-notch customer service.

“Like any organization with company vehicles on the road, we have long worried about the risk associated with cell phone use,” said Steve Darbonne, occupational health and safety manager at Abacus. “As a service company, our technicians are trained to give customers a courtesy call before arriving, not to mention using cell phones for alerts about job changes, reassigned tasks and directions. When deploying the new risk detection, we were able to work closely with the Lytx team to customize event categorization so we could understand better where these behaviors were actually presenting risk and how to mitigate that danger. Bringing that together with fleet tracking has been a big win for us.”

Steve continued, “With so much data powering Lytx’s technology, we initially saw a major rise in the numbers of risky driving events. Lytx MV+AI was identifying risk inside the cab that we just weren’t seeing before. Now, we’re experiencing significant reductions in those behaviors, as we use that awareness to show our drivers the prevalence and risk of distracted habits, while in-cab audible alerts notify them of dangerous activities as they happen so they can self-correct.”

Lytx MV+AI: The Only Solution Converging Both Real Time In-cab Alerts to Empower Driver Self-improvement and Best-in-class Video Highlights for Driver Coaching

Lytx MV+AI provides accurate and timely visibility into eight high-risk behaviors that occur both on the road and in the cab. The company’s MV+AI road-view triggers, launched in 2015, include rolling stop, lane departure, following distance and critical distance. Lytx released a major enhancement earlier this year, with MV+AI used to proactively detect driving behaviors including handheld device, no seatbelt, food or drink and driver smoking, illuminating significantly more risk and providing clients and drivers with new levels of awareness.

Lytx triggers monitor for and detect driving behavior patterns in real time and are connected to audio alerts designed to help drivers self-correct in the moment. In order to minimize “alert fatigue,” Lytx helps keep alerts effective by controlling their frequency so drivers will be less likely to tune them out.

In addition to real-time, in-cab alerts, short video highlights are selected to be analyzed and further screened by Lytx’s artificial intelligence for accuracy. In addition to the eight risky behaviors detected using MV+AI, Lytx captures more than 50 other high-risk driving behaviors via accelerometer. The validated video clips are then automatically sent via a 4G LTE cellular connection from the vehicle to the cloud, where they may be viewed by the client via their Lytx account from any internet-connected computer, smartphone or tablet. Drivers have the ability to self-coach as well, by reviewing clips independently and leaving notes for their coaches or managers to review, as needed, at a later date.

About Lytx
Lytx^® is a leading provider of video telematics, analytics, safety, and productivity solutions for commercial, public sector, and field service 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 1.3 million drivers worldwide. For more information on Lytx telematics systems, visit lytx.com, @lytx on Twitter, LinkedIn, our Facebook page or our YouTube channel.

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