1         Introduction

Speed management is a fundamental aspect of the Chain of Responsibility (CoR) requirements for the Transport and Logistics industry. Speed is measured using high quality GPS chips and real time alerts are generated so breaches in Company speed policies can be actioned immediately. Reports are available to help manage drivers and track trends over time. Speed is an integral part of the Compliance Management report where the action recorded against each speeding breach can be recorded.

This approach also allows for greater flexibility in setting up alerts and reports in NextGen.

2         Generation of speed events on the device

Speed Events are generated on the iFace and the Telematics Box. Devices that do not generate speed events in line with NextGen include T-SPOT and any other device we do not write software for.

PLEASE NOTE: this document is about the Speed Event product. The Speed Assist product for iFaces is an entirely different product and is solely a tool for the driver in the vehicle. Speed Assist does not generate any data that is sent to NextGen.

2.1      Parameters

The devices look at speed on a per second basis and determine whether a speed event is raised. The parameters that are used to determine speed that are configurable on the device are as follows:

• Speed limit – the base limit to use to assess speed
• Speed limit threshold – the value in km/h above the speed limit which is considered speeding
• Duration – the number of seconds when the speed is required to be above the limit + threshold before the speed event is raised

The default values on all devices have the global config speed limit set to 100km/h, with a threshold of 7km/h and duration of 5 seconds. This translates to speed events being generated if the vehicle travels above 107km/h for a minimum of 5 seconds.

2.2      Speed limits

There are different speed limits used based on what device capabilities are available:

• Telematics Box – one global config limit
• iFace
• global config limit
• vehicle limit – based on what the vehicle type is set to on the iFace (eg if set to Road Train this will be 90km/h, B Double 100km/h, Car – no limit)
• signposted limit – if navigation is installed, the signposted limit of the road (please note that by default, signposted limits for speed events are disabled, due to inaccuracies of the road speed dataset. This can be re-enabled by the NextGen configuration of devices).

Where more than one limit is set on the device, the lowest configured limit will be used to assess speed.

2.3      Ending a speed event

A speed event will end for the following reasons:

• Normal – the vehicle speed falls below the limit + threshold
• Threshold Change – the speed limit being assessed against has changed (eg using signposted limits and the limit changes from 60km/h to 80km/h)
• Invalid Speed – speed is unable to be determined due to invalid signal
• Timeout – the speed event has been going on for more than 10 minutes

2.4      Applications required to generate speed events

Devices will generate speed events if they have the Speed Events service enabled on the device via NextGen agreements. The Speed event service is included in product bundles such as Compliance Packs and Premium Tracking Packs.

3         NextGen

NextGen uses the speed events it receives from devices to generate alerts and show data in reports.

An important note is that more than one device in a vehicle may be generating a speed event. Consider a vehicle setup in NextGen and both an Telematics Box and iFace assigned to that vehicle. If both devices are enabled for speed events, they will both generate the data which will be used for alerts and reports. Note that the speed limits used on each device may differ at any time (eg config on Telematics Box set to 100km/h, vehicle type on iFace set to Road Train which has limit of 90km/h). This possible difference, along with GPS quality and environment, means that it is not guaranteed that both devices will generate identical events.

Noting the above, it does mean two alerts may be raised for the one instance of speeding (one event from the Telematics Box and one event from the iFace). Both events will also appear in the report.

We have implemented a feature in NextGen such that if an iFace is attached to a vehicle and a Telematics Box is attached to the same vehicle, and both devices have the speed events agreement attached, then the iFace will automatically have speed events disabled. This is to ensure only one device generates the events, and the Telematics Box takes precedence because of its higher level of accuracy. This option can be explicitly overridden via the configuration of devices in NextGen.

If a vehicle has a Qube and an iFace, the iFace will generate the speeding events using the Qube GPS as its source of data.

3.1      Reports

Reports are accessed via the reports navigation tab and allow you to enter a minimum speed to look at. This will retrieve all speed events with a reported speed above the entered value. Note that the reported speed is the highest value in the speed event.

As an example, a speed event may be triggered because the vehicle travels at 108km/h for 5 seconds, but continues for another 15 seconds and in that time the vehicle reaches 112km/h. The reported speed in the speed report summary will be 112km/h.

The reports include 10 second lead in and lead out data, to show what the vehicle was doing before and after the speed event. All data also includes the altitude, so that speed vs altitude can be viewed on a graph to give an indication as to the environment whilst the vehicle was speeding.

The easiest way to understand the reports is by running a few and having a look at the details.

3.2      Alerts

Speed Alerts are setup in NextGen under the My Alerts section. Email, SMS and on-screen alerts are available, configured on a per fleet or per vehicle/device basis. There are two items of the configuration that may require clarification:

• Signposted – quite often speed events generated when assessing speed against the signposted limit are incorrect due to incorrect navigation data. It is possible to suppress being alerted for speed events that are assessed against the signposted limited by turning this setting to ‘off’ for any devices that you want to receive alerts for.
• Threshold – people have different requirements for alerting. Some may want to know about all events that are 5km/h above the limit, others only want to know about 10km/h. Setting this value adds the flexibility to only be alerted if the reported speed is above a threshold over the limit.
• An important note on this threshold – it will only be useful to set the threshold value to be at or above what is set on the device, otherwise it will not have an effect. As an example, if the threshold limit on the device is 7km/h (by default), it will only send events once the speed reaches 7km/h. If you set your alert to 5km/h, there will be no events in NextGen for 5km/h, so it actually only has the effect of setting it to 7km/h. There is currently no visibility in NextGen to see the settings on the device, so this is tricky to manage. An improvement scheduled to be developed is to be able to modify the device settings for speed limits and configs via NextGen. Once this is implemented, the alert threshold will be more meaningful and be able to be aligned with the settings on the devices.