Tesco to map van speed to road limit

Tesco Dotcom, the home delivery division of Tesco, is to introduce speed monitoring which will allow it to map the speed of its vans to the actual speed limit of the road for the first time.

It will enable the Fleet News Awards winner to identify when and where its drivers are exceeding the speed limit and take appropriate action. A speeding event is triggered when the road limit is exceeded by 10%.

The ‘contextual speeding’ system, which uses a combination of Microlise telematics and Navtech mapping data, provides a driver report which shows the road speed, the speed of the driver, the time of day and the longitude/latitude which can be dropped into Google maps for a precise location. It also provides vehicle registration and the Tesco store location.

Tesco Dotcom is currently training its drivers to make them aware of the new system ahead of its launch in October.

The company took the decision to use a system linked to the CANBUS rather than GPS, both for accuracy and because it uses data that the drivers can see.

“When we were talking to the unions about this it didn’t seem fair to take data from something that the driver couldn’t see, the GPS,” said Cliff Cheeseman, Tesco Dotcom fleet operations manager – training. “Whereas the CANBUS is taken from the speedo, which they can see.”

Tesco Dotcom will use the data to initially target drivers that are exceeding speed limits by the largest margin and those who are the most persistent offenders. Once it gets the number of speeding events down to a manageable level it will put the emphasis on store managers to control the process and take action.

“We have given drivers enough time to do their routes properly. They do not need to speed and we tell them not to,” said Tesco Dotcom operations director Keith Price.

“We expect this system to bring down the number of speeding events to zero – or a minimal level - by the end of January.”

He also anticipates a reduction in fuel usage and fewer accidents, both small knocks and more serious crashes, as the behaviour of the fleet changes.

For more on fleet management, come to the Fleet News fleet management section for more information.