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    AI, Machine Vision Join Telematics to Tackle Distracted Driving

    Feb. 25, 2020
    Telematics provider Lytx has unveiled a technology designed to address distracted driving. It involves enhanced machine vision and artificial intelligence-powered risk detection.
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    Telematics provider Lytx has unveiled a technology designed to address distracted driving. It involves enhanced machine vision and artificial intelligence-powered risk detection.

    Each day in the U.S., over 1,000 people are injured, and nine are killed, because of distracted driving. To help combat this epidemic and alleviate other high-risk behaviors for its clients, Lytx, a provider of video telematics solutions for commercial, public sector, and field services fleets, has enhanced its machine vision and artificial intelligence (MV+AI)-powered technology to provide near real-time insight into risky behaviors like texting and driving.

    This  technology is designed to like a co-pilot, constantly monitoring the road and the driver, detecting risky driving and triggering short video clips to provide insight into what’s really going on inside the vehicle.

    Lytx’s risk-detection technology is included as part of its Driver Safety Suite, and now includes the following four new MV+AI triggers: handheld device, no seat belt, food or drink, and driver smoking. It can be coupled with Lytx’s Fleet Tracking Service to provide an integrated solution for fleets looking to optimize their vehicle technology with a single vendor.
    “Fleets are seeing first-hand how our next-generation technology will give them the tools to proactively tackle some of the toughest problems, like distracted driving, facing the transportation industry,” said Brandon Nixon, Lytx chairman and CEO.

    “Because of the vast scope and scale of our driving data, we have advanced the use of MV+AI to unprecedented levels within the industry," Nixon said. "We now have the ability to more fully and accurately capture and identify risk for the fleets we serve even better than before.”

    Lytx says it presents an accurate view of risk, with greater than 95 percent accuracy across more than 60 risky driving behaviors. In 2019 alone, Lytx labeled over 1.75 million minutes of video with cell phone use, driver unbelted, smoking, and food/drink behaviors.
    The program delivers prescriptive and customized coaching insights to fleet managers.

    The new triggers are an extension of Lytx’s existing MV+AI road-view triggers launched in 2015: rolling stop, lane departure, following distance. and critical distance. Both sets of triggers monitor for driving behavior patterns and select short video highlights to be analyzed and screened by Lytx’s artificial intelligence for accuracy.
    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 a client via their Lytx account from any Internet-connected computer, smartphone, or tablet.

    Fleet managers and drivers then have the opportunity to view these video clips using Lytx’s proprietary coaching workflow. This program has been proven to help change driving behavior and is associated with up to 50-percent reduction in collisions and 80-percent reduction in associated claims costs, Lytx says.