“During our first year of implementing the DriveCam Program, we saw an 81% reduction in the cost of accidents and a 76% reduction in frequency of accidents. Based on the results of the DriveCam program, we’re now expanding to implement DriveCam’s Fleet Tracking Program across our fleet. It will allow us to manage our fleet more effectively and more efficiently.”
Situation
Orange County is one of the largest counties in the United States with a large population growth. If current trends continue, the county could have a population of 2,500,000 by the year 2050.
Continued growth requires increased infrastructure and county services, resulting in 2,200 vehicles to support the county’s growing needs. With a large and diverse fleet, the County began seeing incidents and accidents that needed to be addressed.
Solution
Under the direction of John Petrelli, Manager of Risk Management, the County began looking at options to correct the problems that were occurring on the county’s roads. Risk Management is responsible for identifying loss trends and putting measures in place to minimize losses associated with negative trends, along with the development and enforcement of Orange County’s Safety & Health Manual and developing and conducting safety training programs.
Once DriveCam was identified as a viable option, the County entered a 90-day trial program in 2009 with 30 vehicles. Upon presentation of the initial results, the Program was immediately implemented across 780 vehicles and will be implemented throughout the entire fleet of 2,200 vehicles.
“We started to see poor driving behaviors that we were able to address immediately, such as significant problems with people wearing seatbelts, people following too close and rolling stops,” commented John Petrelli. “With DriveCam video, we’re now able to enforce a lot of those elements that we wouldn’t be able to see otherwise.
Impact
As a result of implementing the DriveCam Program, Orange County has seen an 81% reduction in the cost of accidents, a 76% reduction in frequency of accidents and a 50% reduction in coachable behaviors during the first year of implementation.
Prior to implementing DriveCam, Orange County initially thought the ROI (payback) for the Program would be 3-4 years. Based on the results produced, the payback was only one year.
What’s Next?
Based on the results of the DriveCam Program, Orange County is now expanding to implement DriveCam’s Fleet Tracking Program across a portion of its fleet initially and is evaluating additional expansion to include its Utilities, Public Works and Code Enforcement departments. “Orange County is a large county and to get from one corner to the other takes nearly two hours. If you can keep people geographically situated, it will be much more efficient for everyone,” Petrelli explained.
“We appreciate that DriveCam’s Fleet Tracking is a single platform solution and we don’t need to purchase additional hardware. All we have to do is turn a switch and we’re able to see our vehicles in real time; this allows us to manage our fleet more effectively and more efficiently. Since the application is integrated into DriveCam Online, our organizational hierarchy is already in place so we can easily track the trip history of our entire fleet.”
Orange County has a recognized safety culture. Its goal is for everyone to leave the workplace in the same condition they arrived. DriveCam reinforces this culture by reducing the cost of accidents and the frequency of those accidents.