The EROAD Clarity Dashcam: The next part of our safety strategy

BOC industrial gas company shares their EROAD Clarity Dashcam onboarding story and how camera footage and telematics BOC already had a strong safety culture and a track record of success with telematics. Dashcams were the next logical step for the business – and the decision has already paid off.

BOC is a subsidiary of Linde plc, a global gas company and local leader in the welding products market. For 80-plus years, BOC has produced high-grade gases to supply industries including agriculture, welding, healthcare, and mining.

Business manager at BOC South Pacific, Scott Harder has been with the company for almost nine years in a variety of roles, from account manager to sales engineer. Scott oversees all aspects of the business for the Northern Region, working in tandem with the Southern Business Manager and NZ & Pacific Islands General Manager. The two business managers run most of BOC’s light fleet of 50 non-commercial vehicles, primarily for sales reps and engineering staff, all fitted out with EROAD’s Ehubo2 units since January 2020.

“The goal was for us to have informed conversations with our drivers and help them understand how they could become better and safer,” says Scott. “We needed something that would give us better information. It wasn’t us wanting to be Big Brother and watch the fleet and where they were going; it was more out of concern for people’s safety and wanting to make sure we’d given our drivers the best tools we could.”

As soon as the EROAD Clarity Dashcam became available, BOC was on it, and it was simply a matter of expanding their existing telematics data use policy to include dashcams and then answering a few questions from the team.

“One that came up was, were we going to be recording audio within the vehicles?” recalls Scott. That question turned out to be easy to answer, as the default setting for the EROAD Clarity Dashcam is that no audio is recorded. “We currently have no need to use audio recording, but we were very clear on how and when dash camera footage could be used for incident investigation, coaching, and relative disciplinary or reward actions.”

Because of BOC’s history with video surveillance, they already had a sound policy in place, as many of their locations have high security and/or safety requirements: “We have extensive CCTV coverage across many of our sites, so that was something we covered with HR many years ago in terms of employee privacy, the company’s right to record them and so on.”

Since getting the EROAD Clarity Dashcam less than three months ago, BOC has already seen benefits: More than once, the availability of footage has been in their favour. In one case, a member of the public phoned in to complain that one of their drivers had been speeding and driving erratically. Before talking to the driver, they looked at the EROAD data and saw that the speed the person was claiming was “drastically incorrect.” What would normally have been a difficult conversation was “quite nice, from a management point of view. We were already supporting that driver’s position because we’d seen the evidence versus what was being said by the person who phoned up.”

In another case, dashcam footage was quickly able to show that an employee whose vehicle was T-boned by someone pulling out of their driveway was in fact not at fault. This saved hours of investigation as well as a lot of worry on the driver’s part. Scott speaks from personal experience: In the past, he was involved in a not-at-fault accident where he didn’t have a dashcam or telematics unit in the vehicle.

“Even though the police told me I’d done nothing wrong, I was left with this feeling of, Am I sure I did everything I could to avoid that? Did I do everything 100% correct?”

In this instance, however, he was able to pull the footage, view it with the driver, and confirm that she hadn’t breached any safety protocols. In fact, she had handled the situation perfectly!

“Even post-incident, she worked out how to get off the road safely and acted in a very safe manner, and we commended her on that. We’ve been able to use the data in a really positive way in that regard.”

Scott says he could go on all day about the benefits. “It’s amazing how much reassurance having that footage gave our driver. Someone who’s been involved in an incident doesn’t need to dwell on it for a fortnight while we work through an investigation. If we can close it out in a matter of hours, that’s a great outcome for the business; that’s a cost savings for us. That’s hours and hours of investigation that doesn’t need to happen and almost instant relief for the driver concerned, their manager, and our health and safety team.”

If your health and safety team is considering dashcams, Scott advises gaining a thorough understanding of the technology first: “Spend time with the EROAD reps and really dig into what the technology does and how it does it.”

Then communicate your intentions and expectations clearly. “Keep an open line of communication with back office and your drivers, but also have a very clear, defined policy around how and when the data or footage may be used.”

Make sure your policy also spells out what happens when data or footage is used – namely what the steps are for coaching, discipline, or reward. “And stick to them,” warns Scott. “You can’t have one rule for some and another rule for others. The law doesn’t, and nor should any policy, footage, or data gained from a telematics solution in a vehicle.”

By being transparent, consistent, and fair, you’ll get more buy-in from your drivers. While he acknowledges that the high level of visibility may take getting used to for some, “If you’re a good, safe driver, you’ve got nothing to worry about.”