5 Advantages of Using Telematics in School Buses
When transportation managers incorporate telematics in school buses, their workload becomes more manageable. Whether they want to get live information about their fleet or see how their drivers operate, telematics gives them the appropriate tools to improve and streamline their operations.
Since this technology has changed today’s world so much, it is necessary to know what it is and how it works. This blog will briefly explain telematics and list five benefits of integrating this technology into a school transportation fleet.
What Is Telematics?
Simply put, telematics refers to services and techniques involving information transmission and automatic processing. This recently formed term combines two words: telecommunications and informatics. The former tells us about the data transmission part, and the latter about the nature of the information, in this case, computerized data.
Particularly, telematics in school buses involves designing, evaluating, and applying communicational models to transmit and store information about every aspect of your fleet.
Telematics in School Buses: How does it work?
Telematics allows data transmission from the bus to the fleet manager, automating and improving many manual or disconnected tasks. Since these systems run in the cloud, the information is available and updated in real-time on a web platform.
To incorporate telematics school buses, it is necessary to connect a GPS device to the bus diagnostic port. This device sends the data collected to the web through radio frequency and satellite signals. Thanks to this simple process, school administrators can have all the information they need when they need it.
Advantages of Having Telematics in School Buses
Telematics can make school buses more efficient, safer, and easier to maintain. Here is our list of the top five advantages telematics brings:
1. Improves passenger safety
Telematics and GPS tracking improve the safety of students, giving parents peace of mind regarding their whereabouts.
With tools like these, transportation administrators can see real-time information about the location of every unit. They can also determine the condition of their units, drivers, and students.
2. Increases fleet productivity
Accurate knowledge of routes, travel time, driver behavior, and the status of all components of each bus (time, mileage, etc.) allows transportation managers to plan their district routes better.
Likewise, telematics help them prevent buses from making unnecessarily long or inefficient trips.
3. Reduces fuel and maintenance costs
Through better route planning, telematics can drastically reduce fleet fuel costs, for example, by reducing stops and slowdowns on routes.
In addition, this technology allows administrators to see the current mechanical status of each bus, which helps prevent breakdowns or accidents, and, in turn, helps reduce costs.
4. Schedules maintenance more efficiently
Collecting real-time data makes it possible to identify fleet problems and breakdowns before they escalate and pose a risk of long-term downtime. Better safe than sorry, right?
Similarly, telematics makes it easier for fleet managers to plan for recurring vehicle maintenance and service dates.
5. Improves driver behavior
The accident risks inherent in fleet management can be more easily controlled with telematics. Indeed, such a system makes it possible to continuously improve driver behavior by analyzing data such as braking time, acceleration, speeding, etc.
Ultimately, telematics allows harmonizing behavior for safer driving by identifying risky behaviors.
To sum up, telematics has found its niche in school transportation thanks to the numerous advantages it gives to everyone involved in the industry. From improving driver and passenger safety to enhancing bus productivity, incorporating telematics in school buses will provide valuable information and improve your daily operations.
The Best Web-Based Solution
TripSpark uses telematics tools, through easy-to-install hardware and scalable cloud-based software, to offer real-time GPS tracking, live and historical fleet metrics and measurements, monitoring, scheduling, and route optimization tools.
We are proud to be a store with all the necessary tools to manage your school routes. With TripSpark, you will be able to benefit from the following:
- Remote monitoring and control of your units: With the fastest real-time updates in the market (refreshing every 5 seconds).
- Increased productivity: Improved routes according to the number of students, directions, and bus capacity, among others. Make the most out of your resources.
- A constant flow of information: Exhaustive reports to know precisely the buses’ status and what is happening in all areas of transportation.
- Continuous connectivity: An intelligent system that allows offline data storage without an Internet connection.
- Utilities on the go: TripSpark gives you three different mobile apps targeted to the three main stakeholders: administrators, drivers, and parents. These apps are compatible with Android and iOS mobile devices, allowing users to maintain stable and uninterrupted communication channels.
TripSpark: A solution for all your school operations. Click here if you want to know more about our products.
Contact us at 1-844-468-4239 today or click on the button below to request a Demo.