Inward Facing Cameras & AI

someone said "AI" and everyone is losing their minds

Well said, and true. We truckers are funny. We can face terrible storms, black of night, and ridiculously demanding schedules, but get us thinking somebody might get to see what we're doing every once in a while, and we lose our composure.

For myself, the bigger issue is feeling like the truth was slowly trickled out to us, after every direct lie.

This is two incidents that have made me question the level of trust I have in the company.

Yeah, I severely dislike the idea of the camera pointed at me, and notifications going off (how many of us ignore the lane departure warning? Or the soft beep of following too close?) but it won't be the absolute deciding factor in me leaving, it would be one of many.

AI isn't perfect, nor will it ever be.

So I’m thinking that there are different levels of technology used with inward facing cameras. Is this the case? For example, the Prime cameras will use AI and will be advanced technology. Then there are the older systems that can record but don’t analyze like AI does. I believe my company uses cameras with just basic recording ability. Even with all the reaching, grabbing, looking around at things, etc. that I have done while the inward camera has been on me, I’ve never received a complaint from the company. I understand that they don’t view the “footage” unless a critical event is triggered. The system we have gives me no concern whatsoever. This status quo may change according to what the company decides, but until then I have other things to fret about.

Now if they ever ding me for picking the lint out of my belly button while driving, that would make me want to fight.

So I’m thinking that there are different levels of technology used with inward facing cameras. Is this the case?

In short, yes. Not every camera out there has the capability and software to detect eye movements and seat belt use and so on. You can even buy different kinds of cameras yourself from truckstops with varying levels of technology.

It’s also not all about the cameras themselves. Some companies simply monitor their drivers more than others. Idk about all camera systems but I know at least some of them like the ones my company uses can have certain alerts turned on or off. I’ve worked for a company that will call you if you’re not wearing your seat belt while driving in their yard and I’ve worked for another company that wouldn’t fire you even if they caught you red handed doing 20 over (it wasn’t me lol. The safety lady told me herself they had drivers they had caught doing it and they did not fire them).

I have a question. It seems to me that some companies are claiming that driver facing cameras will save the company insurance costs by lowering premiums. I can understand this if a company has an insurance provider. But…..what if a company is self-insured like some of the big ones? How can these self-insured companies claim that the cameras will save insurance costs if they have no outside insurer?

There is a misnomer in the whole "self insured" title. Most of the megas are self insured, to a point.

If a claim is under a certain dollar amount, the company eats the cost, because that small claim is statistically cheaper than paying insurance premiums on every truck for a $500 deductible.

Think of it as a person carrying a "catastrophic coverage" high deductible/high co-insurance medical plan.

If you only visit the Dr for an annual wellness and blood work exam, you will pay out more for your premium in the year, than if you just paid cash for the visit and blood work. Let's say the same person gets diagnosed with cancer, this person reaches the deductible and co insurance stop loss really fast.

The stop loss is literally the maximum dollar amount you can lose in a year, paying for medical bills.

So,transfer that theory to trucking, and a self insured covers all repairs and claims up to a certain dollar amount, ie the Stop loss.

The short term is lower insurance premiums for the year, and an acceptable loss risk.

How has it been?

For myself, the bigger issue is feeling like the truth was slowly trickled out to us, after every direct lie.

This is two incidents that have made me question the level of trust I have in the company.

Yeah, I severely dislike the idea of the camera pointed at me, and notifications going off (how many of us ignore the lane departure warning? Or the soft beep of following too close?) but it won't be the absolute deciding factor in me leaving, it would be one of many.

AI isn't perfect, nor will it ever be.

It stopped complaining after the first couple of weeks. I think it learns my styles as well as me figuring it out. Prime keeps changing things so what triggered it before may not do it now.

In July i ranked 10 out of 426 drivers using them. Yesterday was the first alert in 2 months and it said i took a turn too fast. No calls... no critical event on QC. I dont even recall it. Never said anything just sent a video. I don't care. You just forget about it most of the time.

Because of that turn yesterday, i dropped from 35 for the month of august to 152. Oh well. Boo hoo.

In July i ranked 10 out of 426 drivers using them

They call what they're doing "gamification" of a system. They make it like a video game, hoping that people enjoy the competition and look at it more like a fun game of self-improvement instead of the more serious-sounding driver monitoring system.

As both a tech guy and someone who makes every effort to be a high performer in life, I can see where they're getting their ideas from. Scoring yourself and using every available technology to gain an edge is what high-performing people often do.

There's a saying that what gets measured gets improved. If they simply say, "drive safer," it doesn't give enough specifics to know what you should work on. By giving you exact scores for various things, they give you specifics to work on.

I'm a skier, and I have these sensors that go in your boots. They measure a long list of variables like turn radius, edge angles, parallelism, weight distribution on your feet, etc. It actually reads out your scores in real-time while you're skiing (if you want it to) so you know how you're doing and what to improve at all times.

I love it. It improved my skiing dramatically in a very short time. It made me realize I had issues I could have never recognized without an accurate system of measurement.

So the truck cameras and gamification of safety can lead to big improvements, but there's are massive differences between my ski experience and trucking. Not only is no one looking over my shoulder to see if I'm "good enough to remain on the team," but there are no privacy concerns.

So from a pure performance standpoint, what they're doing makes sense on the one hand. But on the other hand, they're creating an incredible amount of pressure on drivers and they're also creating privacy concerns for those who sleep in their truck or are doing things unrelated to safe driving. Not to mention, it makes you feel like a child when someone is babysitting you and literally watching every move you make.

Even as a former driver, I have to side with the trucking companies putting cameras in the trucks because of the liability involved. If we were delivering newspapers on a bicycle, it would be hard to justify that level of monitoring and scrutiny. But knowing that one or two seconds of inattention could lead to a massive catastrophe, it's hard to justify putting privacy before safety.

If it were up to me, I would consider the possibility of reducing monitoring with experience. For instance, the first year with the company you have a driver-facing camera. If you prove yourself to be safe and reliable, you earn the right to have the camera removed.

In July i ranked 10 out of 426 drivers using them

That's a small percentage of the trucks you guys have. Is this a pilot program? Or is that how many they've installed so far?

Some think they want to have "gotcha" moments to fire us.

They do. That wouldn't be the main reason they're doing it, and it doesn't mean they'll use those moments, but I'm sure they feel it's nice to have them if they need them.

The nice thing about the cameras is that they're trying to prevent accidents, not just reacting to them. Imagine if our healthcare and food system incentives were based on preventing illness instead of treating it. We'd be far more healthy.