Rocky Mountain Tracking

GPS vehicle tracking systems can go a long way toward helping business owners manage vehicle use and employee productivity.

Your operations will be much more efficient if you employ GPS technology. Being able to have a route mapped out will allow employees to get work done much faster. It is highly likely that each one of your company vehicles could make at least one more stop, job, or delivery each week. If you have several vehicles, do the math. More deliveries means more satisfied customers and more business. For companies that are growing and have felt a little strain in getting things out to customers, a GPS tracking device can help. Your employees will be able to get more done in less time. You will be able to handle a recent surge in business and feel confident in seeking even more business.

A GPS tracking device also monitors vehicle speed and usage. Certainly you have taken the time to hire trustworthy individuals, but no one is perfect. For example, speeding can raise fuel costs. A well-meaning employee who speeds out of habit probably doesn’t think about what this costs the company. A GPS tracking device tracks speeds so managers can be alerted to speeding. This way, they can talk to the employee and let this person know that they need to stick to the speed limit to keep costs down.

You can set up alerts on the software that accompanies a GPS tracking device to inform managers of infractions that you feel need to be addressed. That could be speeding, idling, or traveling beyond certain boundaries. Some employees cannot handle the temptation to make a side trip here or there in a company car. Managers can be made aware of this and take appropriate action as necessary. Again, the employee is probably not thinking about the costs in fuel or added wear and tear on the company vehicle, but as a business owner, you must think about these things.

Like anything that we use to improve our personal lives, GPS tracking devices also have very useful applications for business owners. The same way a GPS device can help you get to the store or a friend’s house is the same way it can help your employees reach a destination to make a delivery or meet with a client as well as allow you to monitor productivity.

People use GPS in their personal vehicles to help them save time and reduce gasoline use and you can use this technology for the same purpose in your business. The efficient use of your company’s vehicles will result in great savings for you in so many levels.

By having a destination already mapped out for them, your employees will know how much time it will take to reach a certain place. Although they may want to factor in time for traffic or to park, there will be no need to leave time “just in case we get lost.” As they say time is money. Shaving time of off business trips will lead to savings in fuel costs. The savings from reduced gas usage will definitely add up—whether you have a few company cars or a fleet of vehicles.

In addition to reducing time that employees spend traveling, the addition of a GPS tracking device to a company vehicle can reduce work time overall. If employees spend less time on the road, they will have fewer work hours to report. You may not realize it, but some of that overtime you have been paying out can be attributed to time spent on the road. Using GPS tracking can even make a difference in payroll.

The vehicles your organization uses can stay in better condition for longer because you have opted to use GPS tracking devices. The more they are driven, the more wear and tear they will take. By using a GPS you will be ensuring that in addition to regular maintenance, you have done what you could to keep them in great shape. You will reduce costs in the short run by saving on gas and in the long run by getting the most out of each vehicle you purchase.

You know the classic scene—a driver gets pulled over for speeding. They sigh, slow down, and pull over. A police officer exits a squad car, taps on the driver’s side window, and asked that famous question, “Do you have any idea how fast you were going back there?” Answers may vary from “ I don’t know, officer” to giving an excuse for why the speed is so necessary to making up a number.

But what if you didn’t have to make up a number? What if you could give an accurate answer? That might help some drivers and hurt others, depending on their actual speed.

One father is attempting to prove that his son was not speeding by using evidence gathered from the GPS tracking device he placed in his son’s car. The main purpose of the device was for the parents to stay informed about their son’s whereabouts and to monitor his speed, but now it may be put to another use.

As new technology enters our lives, we have to find ways to deal with how we apply it and how we govern ourselves in relation to new machines and gadgets. Cases like this set new precedents for how speeding tickets are contested.

There are any number of reasons that could account for why the GPS recorded a legal speed, while the officer’s radar gun recorded something above the speed limit. In one possible scenario, the calibration for the radar gun that the officer used was not exact.

The case has not been decided so it will be interesting to see how it all turns out.

In the meantime, the father involved stressed that he and his wife did not put the GPS device in their son’s car to avoid traffic tickets. Their goal was to encourage their teen to be a careful driver. He actually hopes that the attention that this case has received will get other parents thinking about using GPS technology to keep teen drivers safe and on the right side of the law.

Disputes between teen drivers and their parents have been popping up all over the news recently. Did you hear about the woman who placed a classified ad to sell the car she’d given her son after she found alcohol under one of the seats?

Of course her son was not pleased, but the woman’s actions were applauded by people all over the country. There is a reason that teens are given some freedoms, but are not totally free from parental control—they simply are not ready to have free reign.

One example of this is the growing number of parents who are using GPS (global positioning system) technology to track the whereabouts of teen drivers. The teen is licensed and allowed to drive, but he or she is not given the freedom to just take the car and go without parents having a clue about their location. Some systems update parents as often as every ten seconds.

While teens feel that their freedom is being curbed or that their parents want to spy on them, they don’t see the dangers of driving while young. And why would they? Many teens are capable and responsible, so why the surveillance?

According to research from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, traffic crashes kill more teens than anything else. The GPS technology includes mechanisms to monitor speed, so not only can parents be updated on their child’s location, they can also get information on how fast they are driving. This is not a cure-all for preventing accidents, but some parental intervention may go a long way towards getting some teen drivers to slow down.

Just as the mom who sold her teenage son’s car was applauded, insurance companies are started to reward parents who make use of GPS technology to keep track of younger drivers. Some insurers offer discounts to parents who choose to keep track of their teen’s driving habits.

Come back tomorrow to learn how one family found that this worked to their benefit in more ways than one.

In a day and age when parents fear for their children’s safety, one school district has decided to use modern technology to put those fears to rest. Officials state that efficiency is the main reason for the program, but it is hard to imagine that parental concern did not factor into the equation.

Earlier this month, the Middletown school district in Providence, Rhode Island enacted a pilot program that included putting RFID (radio frequency identification) chips in tags that will be attached to children’s schoolbags. This initial trial run will include about 80 children (and their backpacks).

The primary reason for the use of this tracking technology is to track students who take the bus to and from school. The chips will record when students get on and off of the school bus, as well as showing the bus’s position as it travels.

The ACLU has already cried foul.

The pilot program was by no means mandatory and parents were informed ahead of time and told who to contact with any questions. Middletown hopes that the program will foster better communication with parents. Parents involved in the pilot will be able go to a website to see when their child got on the bus and to see if the bus will arrive on time.

One official compared the program to programs that let parents check their child’s attendance record or to see their child purchased for lunch. (Notice I said to see what the child purchased—there really is no way to know what a child actually ate for lunch.)

And isn’t that the point—for all of our sophistication, life is still full of variables. A parent could be checking the website and see that according to the RFID, their child is still in school. At that same moment, the child could be walking through the door, having left the backpack in their classroom.

However, it is also possible that a child could be on a bus that had to take an alternate route because of a traffic accident. The parent who checks the website to see that the bus is going in a different direction can make calls to find out what is going on and be assure that their child is fine.