Fleets have long sought ways to manage vehicle speed, and for good reasons – safety benefits, fuel savings, maintenance cost savings, and more.

Higher speeds lengthen stopping distances and give drivers more time to take crash-avoiding evasive maneuvers. Higher speeds also substantially increase crash severity, and the relationship is not linear or 1-for-1. For example, a 30% increase in speed is equal to a nearly 70% increase in kinetic energy.

Higher speeds also mean increased fuel consumption, a primary operating expense. A 1-mph increase in speed equals a 2.2% increase in cost.

And higher speeds result in higher maintenance costs for brakes, tires, and other components.

What Tools Are Trucking Fleets Using to Manage Truck Speed?

The tools for managing speed have evolved over the past decade but remain somewhat limited.

The earliest and most common tool, the speed limiter, has certainly been beneficial. However, speed limiters only cap top speed. They don’t control speed in areas with lower speed limits, and they don’t address the wide disparity in maximum speed limits from state to state. 

Speed limiters were primarily deployed by many fleets to manage fuel economy, not necessarily risk, and limiting top speed meets that objective. 

But today, trucking fleet managers are looking for ways to manage speed dynamically across various speed limits, adverse conditions such as rain, and in diverse environments, such as school zones, construction zones, and high-risk areas where rollovers are more likely.

Telematics and Managing Vehicle Speed

More recently, fleets have leveraged their vehicle telematics systems to monitor speed and provide in-cab messages to drivers, urging them to slow down. 

These systems represent a leap forward for several reasons. 

• First, they provide an “in the moment” location-specific message to the driver that can be very effective in changing behavior.

• Second, they enable fleets to remotely monitor data and trends that identify which drivers fail to heed in-cab messages and require additional coaching.

But these systems have their limitations, too. 

For example, they rely on electronic maps that compare the speed limit to the driver’s speed in real time. Because speed limits are ever-changing, these maps are sometimes out of date, resulting in inaccurate messages. 

Some rely on cameras and artificial intelligence to read speed limit signs, but those systems vary in accuracy and reliability. 

And because drivers are getting an increasing number of in-cab alerts from a variety of systems, such as lane departure warning, they begin to tune them out. As one friend described the environment in a modern truck cab: “It’s starting to sound like a casino in there!” 

Lastly, fleets that rely exclusively on in-cab alerts and don’t address drivers with patterns of repeated behavior through personal coaching or other methods often find the systems produce limited returns. 

The Latest Tool in Speed Management: Intelligent Speed Assistance

The latest tool in the evolution of speed management, called intelligent speed assistance (ISA), holds great promise. However, it raises several concerns and implications.

ISA, or speed adaptation, works by monitoring the vehicle’s location via GPS and remotely controlling the throttle to adjust its speed. If the driver is approaching a particular zone at an inappropriate speed, ISA can control the throttle and limit the vehicle’s velocity. 

Though ISA doesn’t engage the brakes (only the throttle), it can all but stop a vehicle by restricting the flow of fuel to the engine.

To be clear, there are different levels of ISA intervention.

• “Informative” or “advisory” ISA merely gives drivers guidance on adjusting their speed for the environment or conditions. This guidance may come in the form of an audible chime when the driver exceeds the speed limit. 

• “Supportive” or “warning” ISA discourages higher speeds by making it harder to further press the accelerator. This is a rather passive approach that simply discourages speeding through pedal resistance but doesn’t fully prevent it.

• “Intervening” or “mandatory” ISA restricts vehicle speed, without driver intervention, via the engine control module (ECM). 

Mandatory ISA that cannot be overridden is the most active form of ISA. It’s also the most likely to raise driver objections.

However, the safety benefits are impressive. It can reduce serious and fatal crashes by at least 40%, according to a report from Oliver Carsten from the Institute for Transport Studies at the University of Leeds in the UK.

Early ISA Adopters Enthusiastic About Benefits in Trucking Fleets

Safety professionals who employ ISA, especially intervening ISA, rave about its capabilities and benefits. 

Western Express, for example, has strategically created zones/geofences around low bridges near routes it commonly uses. If a driver takes a wrong turn and approaches one of these bridges, ISA takes over and cuts fuel to the engine, gradually bringing the vehicle to a stop. 

It has also geofenced areas where the fleet has had several rollovers, such as cloverleaf off-ramps, and limited vehicle speed in these areas.

In addition, they rely on ISA to ensure that drivers entering California are compliant with the state’s lower “truck only” speed limit.

Not surprisingly, drivers are initially uncomfortable with yielding partial control of their vehicles to the cloud. Over time, some have gotten used to the idea, especially after an occasion when ISA prevented them from hitting a bridge or getting a speeding ticket. 

To ease their anxiety, Western Express uses audio and visual messages to alert drivers when ISA is kicking in. For instance, the in-cab telematics system is programmed to say, “approaching low bridge; throttle limited.” At the same time, the system displays a large visual “low bridge ahead” warning to the driver.

Director of Safety Daniel Patterson credits the technology with delivering impressive results. Not only is his crash rate per million miles way down, but his average cost per crash is too, from $150,000 per claim to just over $10,000 per claim. 

But the safety benefits are not the only advantage of ISA. The ability to immobilize a truck remotely helped them thwart an attempted truck theft. The ROI on that one event was truly significant. 

Watch for More Widespread Adoption of Intelligent Speed Assistance

Despite any reservations drivers and their safety managers might have about ISA, one thing is clear: This technology will become more widespread. 

The European Union, for example, requires that all new vehicles be factory-equipped with ISA that will work much like cruise control based on the speed zone. Though use of these systems is optional courtesy of an on/off switch, the default status will be “on” each time the vehicle is started. They can also be overridden by the driver, who ultimately controls vehicle speed. 

The EU also requires event data recorders to show whether the ISA system was off or overridden at the time of the crash. 

Closer to home, a number of states, including Washington, Georgia, Virginia, and the District of Columbia, all have laws mandating ISA for habitual or reckless speeders. And several others, like Arizona, California, and New York, are actively considering such legislation.

Fleets are increasingly installing ISA systems voluntarily to reduce crash rates and claims costs. And more states are progressively adopting ISA to address problem drivers. 

In other words, it is not unreasonable to expect that a vehicle you drive in the not-too-distant future will be equipped with some form of ISA.