The TaxPayers’ Alliance stated in May 2009 that drivers have been hit for almost a billion pounds in speeding fines in the last decade, with at least two tickets handed out every minute. How many SP30’s are you paying for?

Traditionally, the limitation with reporting speeding events in Tracking & Telematics solutions is that speeding was reported against a single arbitrary speed limit value – for example 56mph for a HGV.

As such, many systems only report when a truck has been speeding on a motorway, but what about when that same truck might have been driving at excessive speed in an urban area where the speed limit might be 20 or 30 mph?

Consequently, Microlise has introduced a new Contextual Speeding module to its Fleet & Distribution portfolio.

The solution takes advantage of Navteq adding posted road speeds to their map data.

Now, each time a vehicle’s tracking unit reports in, the reported speed is compared to the posted speed at that location.

The contextual speeding module allows the user to define allowable tolerances in each road speed band. These bands can be adjusted by vehicle type – car, LCV, HGV etc.

Each time an event shows that the reported speed breaks the tolerance for that location; it is recorded against the driver and vehicle. In this way, a report can be generated showing how safely vehicles are being driven and any appropriate actions taken.

Matthew Hague, Product Strategy Director at Microlise states:

“We really think this new add on is going to make a real difference to how our customers manage their drivers and risk. Gone are the days of debriefing drivers against single infringements based on a solely arbitrary limits. You can now build up a profile throughout a period of how drivers are driving, thereby focusing habitual offenders and immediately identifying those drivers who might even be outright dangerous”.