How AI-Powered Dash Cams Can Help with Driver Scoring, Gamification, and Incentives

Today’s AI-powered dash cams have had a profound effect on driver scoring. Any company that operates a fleet can monitor driver performance in real time. You can spot risky maneuvers such as speeding and illegal lane changes. Identify bad behavior such as texting or eating while driving. And get to the root of problems such as excessive idling.

But that’s just the negative side of driver scoring. Don’t forget that dash cams can also help you deliver positive reinforcement to your drivers. This article will explore how artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) can enhance your gamification and incentive programs for better overall results.

How to Gain Buy-in from Your Drivers

If you approach driver scoring as a positive activity—one in which you reinforce good behavior rather than call drivers out on their mistakes—you can improve driver performance across your fleet while instilling in your team a spirit of healthy competition.

You’ll also get greater buy-in from your drivers. Let’s face it: nobody likes to be watched while they do their job, and dash cams can make drivers feel as if they’re under a microscope all day long. If drivers feel as if the cameras are just there to catch their mistakes, they’ll probably resent them. But if you emphasize that the cameras are there to spot their outstanding performance—and then reward that performance regularly in a way everyone can see—you’ll turn a potential negative into a positive for everyone involved.

Using Dash Cams in Driver Scoring

Of course, before you can launch a gamification and incentive program that revolves around dash cams, you’ll need to know you can trust your dash cams. That’s where AI comes in. The right dash cams can use highly accurate AI to recognize objects such as speed limit signs, stop lights, stop signs, and pedestrians. Having this precise intelligence—rather than just raw video footage—gives you much greater perspective into your drivers’ performance.

Dash cams equipped with AI and ML will capture and highlight your drivers’ safest driving events and most positive driving behaviors. They can then automate driver scoring by awarding points to drivers in real time. Good behaviors will earn drivers more points. Bad behaviors will subtract points.

As you can see, this approach does penalize drivers for unsafe behaviors. But drivers and their managers remain focused on a driver’s overall score. A driver who makes a costly mistake has great incentive to drive as safely as possible for the rest of the trip so that he can raise his score.

Now, how can you gamify all of this? Try sending real-time driver scoring updates to an app on your drivers’ phones or tablets. At their next rest stop, they’ll immediately be able to see how they’re doing today. And if you let drivers see their peers’ scores in a leaderboard, you’ll motivate them to be at their best once they get back on the road. Meanwhile, your fleet managers will be able to get a bird’s-eye view of fleet performance simply by scanning the leaderboard.

Choose Meaningful Incentives—and Recognize Your Stars Publicly

Be sure to tie driver scoring to incentives. The first step is to decide what kind of performance you want to reward. Do you want to give a prize to your top overall performer? Enter your top three performers in a raffle for a grand prize? Or reward your most improved drivers? You could use some combination of these ideas or think up a strategy of your own.

What you offer in the way of prizes is up to you, of course. Nobody will ever complain about cash incentives. You could also opt for gift cards, merchandise, or perks such as extra time off.

Whatever you choose to do, make sure you don’t reward in secret. An essential component of any successful incentive program is to recognize your best (or most improved) performers in front of the whole fleet. Consider putting on a quarterly or annual awards show—whether in person or virtual—to announce the winners and award their prizes. Make the show fun and inspiring. You’ll inspire your best drivers to keep performing at a high level and motivate your underperformers to emulate their most successful peers.

For the Most Accurate Driver Scoring, Try This

As you can see, dash cams equipped with AI and ML can do much to support your gamification and incentive programs. But if you want to run your program based on the most accurate driver scoring possible, integrate your dash cams with myGeotab software to view all your information through a single interface. And then minimize inaccurate information by using Gridline to help you analyze your driver behavior data. You’ll end up with a highly accurate view of driver performance across your fleet—and all the information you need to reward and retain your best performers.

We at Gridline are here to help you improve fleet performance by running a successful gamification and incentive program. Ask us about how to establish accurate driver scoring.