Installing IVMS/ GPS Tracking into a vehicle brings two potentially conflicting aspects into contact with each other: an individual’s need for privacy, and a company’s need to protect its drivers’ safety and its vehicles against abuse and unauthorised trips.
Digicore has rolled out IVMS/ GPS Tracking into many businesses and onto many mine sites since 2007 and we have seen the worst when it comes to IVMS/ GPS Tracking resistance. Recalcitrant staff would disconnect them, break them and find whatever they can come up with to make sure the IVMS/ GPS Tracking is not able to do what it was installed for in the first place: to protect drivers against themselves.
Another, perhaps softer form of IVMS/ GPS Tracking resistance comes from an excessive level of privacy intrusion complaints. Most drivers that respect the law and live quiet lives would not mind an IVMS/ GPS Tracking system to track their wives going to buy groceries in a company vehicle – nobody has the time to use IVMS/ GPS Tracking to spy on individuals going about their daily legal business anyway, so it all is really irrelevant. Enters the speedster, who invariable also turns out to be the vehicle abuser, and suddenly IVMS/ GPS Tracking is a hot topic and seen as being intrusive when, realistically, all that IVMS/ GPS Tracker does is keep an eye on dangerous situations.
Our view is that 90% of IVMS benefits come with the last 10% of enforcement: we recommend that companies persevere to find ways to enforce IVMS/ GPS Tracking within the context of what is legal. Driver complaints of IVMS’s intrusion into their lives should obviously be respected and there even are things like business/ private switches available, but in the end IVMS/ GPS Tracking should remain and the feedback it provides should be used on a regular basis. We have also found that IVMS/ GPS Tracking over time becomes acceptable to everybody: people realise it is there to stay and they also accept that the days of bad driving are over.
Slow vehicles down and stop harsh driving, and the safety and financial benefits are there every time – IVMS/ GPS Tracking pays for itself, as we have stated many times before!
