Monitor your Teen Drivers Part II

Driving with male teens is risky!

Washington August 29, 2005 10:17:21 AM IST

http://news.webindia123.com/news/showdetails.asp?id=111115&cat=World

Here's a great article that seems to confirm some of the empirical 'knowledge' many of us carry around. Male teens are high-risk drivers, and male teens with other male teens in the car are significantly more risky. My daddy had an old saying which has often proved true ... one boy is half a man, two boys a quarter man and three boys is no man at all.

What's a parent to do? One place where technology can help make things better for today's parents than they were for my parents is to give serious thought to requiring your teen driver to be tracked full time by a GPS device.

The issues of privacy, trusts and caring always surface, but the fact is, a parent has the duty and the responsibility to do what they must to bring a child trough to adulthood. Start working with your children at the earliest possible age to teach them about road responsibility. Make sure _you_ always drive as you want your children to drive. And broach the idea early that the privilege of driving will be conditioned upon monitoring.

The most trusted drivers in the country ... long haul truckers who go out on the road for days or weeks at a time, carrying precious or dangerous cargo are almost always under constant monitoring. Trust but verify.

There are many devices and systems you could use, but whatever your decision, use one. There is no greater responsibility, nothing about your job, your children's friends opinions, your feelings about privacy, etc. that is _anywhere_ near as important as your primary parental responsibility.

No one can guarantee that monitoring your child will someday result in them thanking you for caring, but one thing for sure, if they don't live to adulthood, you won't be getting any thanks at all.

Businesses are waking up?

Businesses get frugal with fuel
09:32 AM CDT on Friday, August 26, 2005
By ANGELA SHAH and BRENDAN M. CASE / The Dallas Morning News

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/082605dnbusfuelecon.1ca451d0.html

Interesting article today that covers a lot of ground vis-a-vis constantly rising fuel costs and the toll on businesses everywhere.

An interesting fact that didn't make the article was that the fuel savings vehicle auxiliary power unit from Energy and Engine Technology Corp is not at all unique so far as the power saving technology. There's plethora of on-board APUs out there that claim to, and certainly will save fuel. What's unique about the featured solution however, is that it is being marketed as GPS capable, so that 'savers' can track not only how much they saved, but where they saved it.

It's perhaps an unfortunate quirk in the EPA's Clean Air regulations, but a viable quirk none the less that pollutants spewed out the stack in one area are of much more concern than the same amount of pollutants spewed somewhere else. Companies in special compliance zones who are allowed to emit 'X' amount of pollution, but who can prove they emitted less are allowed to sell, trade or barter the difference.

My little company has been trying to pitch this idea for several years now, with limited success. Municipalities and business know that the 'where' of pollution, fuel wastage, dangerous driving, etc. can be determined, but they just haven't correlated it with the fact that location can be very easily and cheaply determined in today's GPS world. A failure of education on my part I guess.

several people in the scientific GPS world have used the phrase, 'The Power of Place'. Perhaps one outcome of this latest fuel debacle will be that this power can migrated into the non-GPS geek world.

What is really Up There?

The GPS Constellation: Now and Future

http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/2005/08/the-gps-constellation-now-and-future/index.php#orison_mc

Those of us in the industry regularly blather on about the 'system' as if it were common knowledge. I came across this referenced article and thought it might be interesting to the more technically minded individuals.

About the only technical flaw in the article is its assertion that there are only 29 satellites currently in orbit. Actually, every single satellite ever launched except one infamous launch failure many years back (described by an old colleague, H. beat Wakernagel as an IOBM (Into Ocean By Mistake)) is still in orbit. As older birds become inoperative they are boosted into a slightly high 'parking orbit' where they will be for at least several thousand more years.

In the world press that glories on the occasional 'big news' military debacle, such as thew infamous $600 C-5 toilet seats of years gone by, the Navstar/GPS is a sensationalists nightmare. A program that has virtually never missed a deadline, has never had a significant system failure and that not only has met and exceeded every military goal but now provides the backbone for ever-increasing civilian uses, there is little 'bad' to write.

That's why you will very seldom find an article like this in the mainstream press. No scandal, no villains, just a lot of dedicated folks operating hardware that meets specifications and continues to do its work, fay after day.

There's a little irony for me in the news about combining the various separate monitoring networks so that the Master Control Station folks at Schriever AFB can do an even better job operating the system. More than 15 years ago I was deeply involved in a program to do exactly that .. however all the various monitor circuits had been paid for by money from different sources, and there is no force more immovable in the US government infrastructure than commercial lease circuit specialists who transfer government money to commercial lease suppliers. After 15 years, hooray, I'm glad it didn't take 30 years.

State Workers Vexed

Some state workers vexed by vehicle policy
August 14, 2005
By Robin Palmer Staff Writer

A policy that has state employees scrambling to find cars to drive while their own vehicles sit idle has many fuming.... (full article here:)

Well here's some happy news for a Monday morning ... the State of Vermont apparently has some management and supervisory personnel who can do simple arithmetic ... and who take their management responsibilities seriously.

The state has made a fleet of "loaner" cars available to state employees and asks them to use state vehicles whenever they need to drive more than 54 miles a day on state business. Seems totally reasonable to me. A number of employees, however, are upset that the state just doesn't let them use their own vehicles to drive all the miles they want, reimbursing them $0.405 a mile for doing so. When state vehicles are all in use, Vermont negotiated a good deal with a local rent-a-car company that gives the state employees vehicles for $31 a day ... reimbursable, of course. Let's analyze for a moment just how well founded the complaints are.

First, they are annoyed that they are asked to book cars 48 hours in advance. Well, I'm not so naive that I don't know trips can't alway be pre-planned. However, I'm also know, having worked under an arrangement with the federal government for years where I could just hop in my car any time, on my own authority, and drive all I felt I needed to and then claim the mileage, that no planning often results in excessive trips. If being a state employee, with attendant benefits and salary, requires a modicum of planning, I say it's good, in the long run, for the employee's productivity and it's certainly good for the state.

Second, many of the complaints revolve around the employee giving up the use of their four wheel drive personal vehicles to "downgrade" themselves to the use of sensible, front wheel drive sedans or vans. I've written about this subject before ... 90% percent of the 4wd vehicles in this country, public or private, are status symbols. Government and commercial fleet managers who actually measure the use of 4wd under real-world conditions find that it is just not used on the vast majority of vehicles ... driving up the cost of the fleet and the cost of fuel, for sure. Employees need to separate out wants from true needs, and it sounds to me as if the leadership in Vermont is doing well at that task.

So, am I anti-employee? heck no, I was an employee, subject to management's dictates for years. But these guys and gals who are complaining out to at least be a little bit better educated as to the good deal they have. The state (in concert with the majority of other government agencies and commercial companies) reimburses 40.5 cents per mile. The true cost of driving a mid-size SUV or pickup in todays world is up to 90 cents per miles according to recent AAA surveys. And, this figure doesn't really take into account the full cost of wear and tear on the vehicle ... anyone can easily imagine the difference in comfort and appearance (and in resale value) of a private car that's say 8 years old with 40,000 miles as opposed to the same vehicle with 80 or 90,000 miles of inadequately reimbursed business miles on it.

It just makes good sense to put all that wear and tar, rock chips, salt accumulation and general degradation back on the state ... and not dive one's own car for 90 cents a mile and get back less than half in reimbursement. Kudos to the leadership of the great state of Vermont ... 49 more that can step up out there ...

Workers Caught Stealing Gas

Jackson City Workers Caught Stealing Gas

August 10, 2005

JACKSON, MS

Jackson police are investigating city workers for the theft of gas, according to WLBT TV. They're not driving off from the pumps, but using taxpayer money to fill gas tanks in their personal vehicles.... (see full article here:)
http://www.fleet-central.com/gf/t_inside.cfm?action=news_pick&storyID=20463

OK, so how does this little tidbit relate to GPS? And why do I care ... or should any business owner or government manager care ... about this relatively minuscule note of petty theft?

Well, because it's far from minuscule to those who know what's really going on in their fleets. Fuel theft and misuse have always been a problem. With fuel prices heading far too close to $3.00 a gallon it's becoming a more and more worthwhile area to devote scarce management resources to. In my commercial work I see more and more evidence of this practice going on, varying only in method and magnitude. The one common constant seems to be that management seldom knows about it until a GPS gives notice ... and management can almost never quantify it. once again, you can't manage what you can't measure.

Fuel irregularities seem to follow two broad patterns. Either employees illicitly fuel their own vehicles at their employer's fueling points or they fuel employer's vehicles and transfer fuel to their own vehicles, using the company/government vehicle as an improvised tanker .. an even grater waste of resources.

A fleet-wide GPS and proper interpretation of results will nip either practice in the bud ... at virtually no additional cost.

In the case of unsupervised refueling of private vehicles, simply correlating the time and date of fuel dispensed with an authorized vehicle physically being at the pump will flag this problem immediately. One simply designates the fueling point as a known location or zone in the system and pulls a simple report that tells what fleet vehicles were at that point and when ... any fuel deliveries that don't match are certainly worthy of investigation. Might sound like some accounting work involved here, but the minor cost of comparing two spreadsheets (easy to set up something like Excel to do this is easy and cheap) is a lot less expensive and time consuming than to hire guards or security cameras.

If the employees are going through the more labor-intensive process of fueling the employer's vehicle and then siphoning out the fuel, a decent GPS will still show this up at very little cost. One client of mine had 4 pickups doing the same basic work across his territory. One truck caught his attention via his monthly fuel bill, because it seemed to burn two or three times the fuel of any of the other three. Rather than send the wasteful truck in for maintenance, the client simply pulled a report for visits to the authorized fueling points. When asked to explain why some days the employee had consumed as many as three tankfuls, and had made frequent stops at his home, the employee resigned, citing the invasive violations of his privacy and that truck immediately returned to normal performance with anewly hired replaement driver.

It's up to you, as a manager. Does your employee's privacy extend to a license to steal, or are you willing to earn the extra money you're paid to be a supervisor/manager?

Do We need More Hunters?:"

Although I've never been a hunter I come from a state which makes a big deal out of hunting and I support hunters and properly managed wildlife management programs. However, one form of hunting I think out to be avidly supported, nation-wide, with a year-round open season is wasters like these government ner-do-wells in California.

Hunting for state vehicles
By David M. Drucker Sacramento Bureau
SACRAMENTO -- California's fleet of state-owned vehicles swelled to 70,000 last year, but officials in an aggressive new asset-management push have so far been able to pinpoint only about 40,000....
(full article here)
http://www2.dailynews.com/news/ci_2922404

How would you like to be responsible for buying, and then losing track of 30,000 vehicles? Shocked? Appalled? Mystified? Unsure of your own abilities? Embarrassed by your betrayal of the public who had placed their trust in you?

Well, apparently, if you are like a large number of alleged government managers in California, you'd just say "hoo hum" and go play golf or something. Sad, indeed.

No one denies California is a huge state. Not long ago I believe I saw an article that said CA was the world's sixth largest economy on it's own, or some such awe-inspiring statistic. But really, folks, can anyone even begin to justify losing 30 thousand or more vehicles? But even knowing where they bought the vehicles? Not knowing who's using them? This is a situation which just spins my blood pressure right off the scale.

And California is not unique! A few months ago Minnesota admitted they couldn't account for over 7,000 vehicles. two months ago Colorado found that the state agency that was supposed to manage vehicles not only wasn't managing them but was allowing other agencies to just buy as they wanted. Using an expensive computer system that the legislature bought them to track expenses resulted in "management data" that showed the state was paying from $0 to $300+ per oil change ... that's pinning it down, isn't it? *sigh* Mississippi is out of control too, one State Senator (Biily Thames) is fighting an uphill battle to find out why Mississippi's count of state employees has dropped measurably since the year 2000, yet the size of the government fleet has increased at least 800 vehicles ... about 10%.

Where are these cars and trucks? And what are they doing for the governments who own them? It isn't the total numbers that give one pause, it's the fact that in state after state, no one knows. Is your state any better off? What about your county and your city? These are questions that really beg an answer.

As regular readers know, I deal in technology that can help manage vehicle fleets. But, sad to say, unless someone is willing to jump in and live up to their responsibilities, my technology and my competitor's as well are virtually useless.

You can't manage what you don't acknowledge you need to manage ... that's the first step.

The Problem Is Not The Technology, It's Taking Responsibility

Mobile Asset Tracking Not a Homogenous(sic) Market, Finds ABI Research

..."There are two key differences between container tracking and trailer tracking: containers are typically used in international trade, while trailers are usually domestically transported. Containers are therefore subject to greater governmental regulation, and, quite frankly, the US government and other nations have been dragging their feet in this area," adds Schrier. "Second, the custody chain in containers is much more fragmented than with trailers, and no party wants to bear the burden of the increased cost." ...

Read Article Here: http://tinyurl.com/ckwao

Mobile Asset Tracking, well what the heck is that? Probably more meanings than even I could blog about, but one of the important ones is tracking trailers and shipping containers.

There are significant reasons to do this, both in the realm of business and security ... which, not surprisingly, overlap.

For years US and overseas transportation companies have spent large sums to track the prime movers ... truck tractors and ships, primarily. The costs of this effort are almost universally judged to be more than worthwhile. The giants of the tracking industry, Qualcomm, Teletrac, etc. have healthy bottom lines and based on the products they sell and the services they provide probably have every right to those products.

But what's missing? The part that moves the cargo and provides the profit, that's what! For years I have wondered why this business is upside down. By themselves a fleet of truck tractors are a worthless liability. About the only thing you could do with them without trailers is use them as very cramped expensive taxis (not even legal under Federal regulations) or perhaps put a freezer atop the 5th wheel and let the drivers sell ice cream cones.

The only think that earns a trucking company's income is the trailer on the back end. tracking of trailers is, after years, moving forward. There are technical challenges that differ from the tracking of the trucks themselves, but there are several technologies out that that work well. benefits include efficiency in movement (equaling profit), reduction of number of assets required and reduction in theft and "shrinkage" with some solutions.

So when will someone decide that containers are worth the same sort of visibility and control? The largest component of the problem does not seem to be cost ... containers are an asset valuable enough to track (in many cases at the beginning and end of overseas shipments the containers are indeed the "trailers' themselves. An additional big payoff benefit would seem to be security. Through initiatives such as operation safe cargo and other programs, the TSA and allied government agencies have made it even more cost effective to track containers than domestic trailers.

What do I perceive as the holdup then? The old failure to accept responsibility problem. Ajax Trucking knows they own their trucks and trailers and they're all here in the US, so they know what makes sense for them to track. XYZ International Containers, however, has their assets scattered all over the world, and, in fact, may well not be a US company. Their business need to accept responsibility for each of their containers within the US is clearly ill-defined.

From a security standpoint, though, their need is even more well-defined. The possibility that Ajax trucking will pick up a dirty bomb or team of terrorists outside the US and ease them across our borders is pretty remote, but the possibility that one of XYZ's containers will perform this same mission, intentionally, is significantly more real.

In most cases I am a pretty pragmatic, capitalistic guy. I'm against big government in general terms and specifically against big government projects when the private sector could perform them better. But in this case I think the need for government leadership is very clear.

The TSA has had money to help fund these initiatives for several years now. In many cases they haven't even been able to spend the money. Sad. What we need is a senator who cares as much about national security as Hillary Clinton cares about the possibility of silly sex cartoons in a video game to just get the legislation rolling to make container tracking a requirement. Once someone decides that the responsibility must be accepted, the solutions will move from demonstration mode to reality and not only will the US be safer, but the business entities who are 'forced' to comply will benefit in a dozen hidden ways from the better business controls that ensue.

Seems relatively win-win to me, are there any leaders in the US?