In-cab cameras are equipped to capture pivotal moments to assist us higher understand why crashes and/or near misses occur.
Photo: Automotive Fleet
In our continued pursuit of safer roads and protecting lives, we’re confronted with a critical query: How can we best find the balance between embracing effective innovations in road safety technology, while giving ample consideration to the very real and essential privacy concerns that these same technologies often raise for industrial drivers?
As the chief director of Together for Safer Roads (TSR), a non-profit organization committed to leveraging private-sector technology, data, and expertise to forestall traffic crashes globally, I find myself at the middle of this issue, working to foster safety in fleet trucking through cross-sector partnerships.
That is most evident as we glance to integrate the life-saving potential of in-cab camera technology into fleets and are confronted with quite a lot of obstacles, often exacerbated by the implications of certain privacy laws.
What’s the Biometric Information Privacy Act?
At the guts of this complex landscape lies an instructive example: the Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) in Illinois.
Designed with the intent of safeguarding individual privacy, this laws has inadvertently also created an environment where we’re seeing an ever-increasing variety of legal challenges against firms providing pivotal, third-party road safety technology.
The purview of BIPA extends to encompass biometric data, a category that features facial characteristics captured by in-cab cameras. While practical in intent, this has sowed seeds of doubt and mistrust, hampering the very adoption of technology that helps to advance road safety in recent and essential ways.
Role of In-Cab Cameras
The intersection of BIPA and in-cab cameras subsequently underscores a singular challenge within the execution and balance of privacy, road safety, and the larger complex ecosystem of relevant stakeholders.
In-cab cameras, aptly termed the “unbiased witnesses” of our modern roads, are equipped to capture pivotal moments to assist us higher understand why crashes and/or near misses occur.
By capturing and analyzing driver behavior and contextual external aspects, fleet managers are supplied with a wealth of critical data points and potential insights, information which could be used to subsequently create effective and personalized coaching strategies; an approach with a ripple effect on your complete protected road ecosystem, including enhanced driver performance and fewer crashes, injuries, and fatalities in addition to potential reductions in insurance costs.
Road safety and privacy shouldn’t and want not be adversaries; they will coexist through innovation and nuanced laws. Whether you might be a industrial driver on the road each and day by day, a legislator crafting privacy-related laws, or considered one of the thousands and thousands of other stakeholders utilizing our nation’s highways, this issue ultimately affects us all.
Laws like BIPA, when applied in industrial driving situations, can result in outcomes which might be unworkable and ultimately frustrate the flexibility of skilled drivers to have access to proven, safety technologies reminiscent of in-cab cameras.
In-cab cameras mean safer drivers, which suggests safer roads. The challenge for us all is to assist create and inform privacy safeguards that in application don’t remove these precious tools from the road.
This Article First Appeared At www.automotive-fleet.com
