SatNavs for trucks - don't overcomplicate
Issue: Winter 2008
Everyone knows the solution for a truck SatNav: A unit where you type in your height, width and weight, then it plans a route that avoids all restrictions. Everyone knows. I have some reservations about such a system, some technical, some practical.
By James Firth
It is becoming clearer now that drivers are buying the units themselves in electronics stores as a luxury to make their working day easier rather than a tool supplied by the employer. With that in mind, any truck navigation solution must be able to compete in a market where you can buy in-vehicle navigation for around £100. That means building commercial vehicle navigation options into standard units.
There are three steps to solving the truck SatNav problem, the first of which could be put into a standard unit tomorrow. The Freight Transport Association (FTA) has developed a policy, with the help of its members, to illustrate how routes for commercial vehicles should be planned: drivers should remain on the motorway or primary route network for as long as is reasonably possible. This means that if a driver has to deliver to a tiny hamlet down a narrow road then he will drive there – home delivery is on the increase with the rise of internet shopping and domestic properties are requiring access for goods vehicles more frequently. But a driver should not be using that road as a through route unless diverting to a superior road would mean an unreasonable detour.
Until recently no unit has had an option of preferring motorways in route planning, and for those that now do the bias is not strong enough. Some computer-based software allows the user to indicate a negative preference to minor roads. This shift in bias alters the route choice significantly enough to avoid some of the most high-profile hot spots that have been reported in the press. So the first step is to get this much heavier bias incorporated into in-vehicle units.
The second involves the local authorities. They would like to have a greater influence over where commercial vehicles drive in their locale. To address this, many authorities have established Freight Quality Partnerships; forums for transport planners, industry representatives and other local stakeholders to meet to discuss the management of freight in local areas.
Very often these have yielded freight maps that identify routes agreed by the groups as being most suitable, either for accessing the city centre, or perhaps a large trading estate that generates a significant amount of freight traffic in the area. These routes have to find their way onto invehicle units and then again have the same heavy bias applied to them.
The final piece of the jigsaw will then be the total dimension restriction database. Many of the problems we read about when a SatNav has sent a vehicle – lorry and car alike – down an inappropriate road, into a ford or other such calamity have come about when the driver has allowed their usual good sense to be overridden by instructions from the SatNav. “I can see there’s a river flowing across the road, but the nice lady tells me this is the way to go.”
I am nervous about any system that might have the effect of decreasing the level of interaction between the driver and the real road environment. Unlike the preferred lorry routes solution, with the dimension restrictions it is absolutely essential that the dataset is 100% complete and reliable before it is released and users must be well disciplined in downloading revisions. Say, perhaps, for resource reasons the database is not complete in the South West peninsula. A driver who believes the unit will route him/her accordingly is more dangerous than a driver using a unit with no such enhancement.
The benefits of SatNav are clear, and we should renounce unequivocally any suggestions that commercial vehicles might be banned from using them. One national home delivery operation reports a return on investment after just three months of installing SatNav across the entire fleet. This return was due to drivers spending less time lost, and therefore using the fleet more efficiently. This brings cost savings to the operator, a greater level of service to the customer and lessens the operation’s environmental impact. What is also clear is that the mapping and navigation industry is far more awake to the commercial vehicle market than they were 12 months ago. We can expect to see truck SatNav solutions appearing more readily in the year ahead.
● James Firth is Regional Policy Manager (Northern England) at the Freight Transport Association. For further information, visit: www.fta.co.uk
Published: 22/12/2008
