Hertfordshire, UK — 28 September, 2017 – Castell Howell Foods Ltd, one of the country’s leading independent food wholesalers, has signed a three-year contract with SmartDrive Systems for its SmartDrive Assurance video-based driver risk management safety programme.  Castell Howell markets and distributes a wide range of produce to businesses across Wales and the South West and operates a mixed fleet of 140 commercial vehicles, encompassing 20 3.5 tonne vans, 115 rigids and 5 artics. Following a comprehensive trial on 20 vehicles, the contract sees the SmartDrive programme rolled out across Castell Howell’s entire fleet.

During the trial period, the programme demonstrated a 58 percent improvement in SmartDrive Safety Score which, based on data from SmartDrive’s global analysis of over 200 million risky driving events, shows that for every 10 percent reduction in safety score, collision frequency reduces by 8.2 percent.

When multiplied across the entire fleet, Castell Howell is confident that these gains will have a significant impact on improving on-road safety and lowering costs, as well as helping them to manage their fleet risk profile in a more proactive manner.   Additionally, the SmartDrive programme is enabling Castell Howell to protect and exonerate not-at-fault drivers and to recognise good driving practices.

“The SmartDrive video-based safety programme provides us with a consistent and programmatic way to proactively identify and improve driving skills in a ‘gamified’ way, that is clear and easy for our driver trainers to review and coach drivers on,” said Martin Jones, director of transport at Castell Howell.  “We operate out of 5 depots, making deliveries 6 days a week to ensure that our customers are receiving top quality foodstuffs, on time and in the best condition.  We are committed to road safety and bringing our drivers and assets home safely and we see SmartDrive as integral to our driver safety improvement programme.”

The SmartDrive system installed at Castell Howell encompasses one forward facing and one interior facing video camera installed in each vehicle. The cameras are triggered to record 20-second event clips by pre-determined variables that are tailored to Castell Howell’s operation.  They can also be manually activated by the driver should an incident occur.

Footage is offloaded instantly via the cellular network and is reviewed, categorised and scored by a dedicated team of SmartDrive driving safety specialists and uploaded to a personalised Castell Howell online portal, enabling its transport managers to quickly gain an unbiased view of situations that occur.

In addition, Castell Howell has chosen the SmartDrive extended recording option that enables it to capture a wider span of timeframes and events, such as low impact collisions, that it can call off as required.

“We trialled another camera based system at the same time as SmartDrive,” said Martin.  “However, we found that SmartDrive delivered the most focused, simple and consistent way to measure and manage risk and help us improve our fleet operation.  The speed of access to event videos and the customised on-line reporting enables us to be very proactive in determining where risk lies and coaching it away.  In essence, SmartDrive does all the heavy lifting for us; capturing, analysing and reporting on risky driving events, leaving our trainers with clear and easy to manage coaching workflows and providing valuable driving intelligence and reporting to the business.”

Martin continued, “Although it is early days, we are expecting to see a quantifiable return on investment within a reasonably short timeframe. This being driven by the proactive management of on-road risk and the associated direct and indirect cost savings.”

Aidan Rowsome, vice president EMEA at SmartDrive UK Ltd concluded, “We’re delighted to have Castell Howell on board.  SmartDrive is particularly active in the UK food and beverage sector, helping fleets improve productivity and safety, while reducing costs.  We work with fleets spanning home delivery to warehouse, storage and distribution operations.  A number of these have been clients since just after we launched in the UK in 2009, which speaks to the strength of our programme and our skilled transport professionals that support it.  We look forward to bringing this knowledge and high level of delivery to Castell Howell.”

About SmartDrive Systems

SmartDrive Systems, the recipient of Frost & Sullivan’s Customer Value Leadership Award for Video Safety Solutions, gives fleets and drivers unprecedented driving performance insight and analysis, helping save fuel, expenses and lives. Its video analysis, predictive analytics and personalized performance program help fleets improve driving skills, lower operating costs and deliver significant ROI. With an easy-to-use managed service, fleets and drivers can access and self-manage driving performance anytime, anywhere. The company, which is ranked as one of the fastest growing companies by Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500™, has compiled the world’s largest storehouse of more than 200 million analyzed risky-driving events. SmartDrive Systems is based in San Diego, and employs over 650 people worldwide.

For more information on SmartDrive Systems, please visit www.smartdrive.net.

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Media Contact:

Penny Randall for SmartDrive Systems Ltd
penny.randall@smartdrive.net
+44 07904 204412