Cloud

Denver Maintains City Vehicle Fleet With Samsara

The municipality has seen remarkable improvement in government driver safety.

Jessica Balen is a freelance writer for the CDW family of magazines.

In 2023, the city of Denver posted an overall average safety score of 95 for the drivers in its municipal fleet of vehicles. Denver officials attributed this high score to coaching based on guidance from dashboard cameras enhanced with artificial intelligence.

As the high safety score suggests, Denver has almost eliminated safety incidents throughout its government-owned fleet, officials say. The city operates the fleet’s AI dashboard cameras as part of the Samsara Connected Operations cloud, which includes coaching tools that provide real-time feedback for drivers based on data captured by the dash cams. Since installing the solution, Denver has reported a 99% decrease in harsh driving, a 98% decrease in distracted driving and a 94% reduction in total safety incidents. It has reduced serious accidents by 60%, and with Samsara’s data as evidence, it has also reduced false safety-related claims against its drivers by 50%.

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The Samsara Connected Operations cloud connects vehicles from across 43 city offices through the Amazon Web Services cloud. These agencies operate roughly 1,500 traditional vehicles, such as cars and trucks, and about 1,000 specialized vehicles, such as snowplows and forklifts. The city has installed telematics in almost all of its vehicles except those operated by the police and fire departments.

Prior to adopting the Samsara solution, Denver officials could not see and compare safety metrics across city agencies, nor could they standardize solutions to improve safety for all drivers.

William Zollo, fleet manager for Denver’s Department of Transportation and Infrastructure (DOTI), explained that the city’s previous systems provided data only after incidents had already occurred, leaving little opportunity to respond proactively.

“We wanted a single provider that could deliver forward-looking insights to guide better decision-making,” he says.

94%

The reduction in road safety incidents among Denver’s fleet of vehicles since installing AI dashboard cameras

Source: William Zollo, Fleet Manager, Denver’s Department of Transportation and Infrastructure (DOTI)

Tracking Maintenance for Optimal Results

Zollo says the Samsara Connected Operations cloud was the only solution available that met all of Denver’s requirements. The solution includes telematics devices that monitor not only driver performance but also engine performance and battery life, as well as the health of other systems, which supports vehicle maintenance.

The system can alert the city to needed vehicle repairs quickly by checking critical fault codes and can automatically flag pending scheduled maintenance and recommend preventive maintenance. It tracks vehicle hours, mileage and patterns to analyze when maintenance should happen within prescribed parameters, and it notifies officials by producing an alert or a work order for maintenance.

By collecting data over time, Samsara also helps the city determine when to replace vehicles. This keeps critical assets such as snow plows ready to go when needed for emergency operations.

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Using the Right Tools to Analyze Data

DOTI receives and tracks notifications of vehicle maintenance schedules though a separate application. It then displays maintenance data through dashboards using Microsoft Power BI for analysis and visualization.

“We’ve replaced manual reporting with multiple Power BI dashboards that give other divisions instant access to fleet data,” Zollo says. “These dashboards deliver crucial real-time insights that keep us on track.”

The Power BI dashboards include:

Real-time fleet performance monitoring
Safety trend analysis with Samsara incident data
Maintenance cost tracking and forecasting
Fleet optimization data for vehicle use and route planning
Route efficiency and fuel consumption reporting
Regulatory compliance data

DOTI can schedule data exports to share with city officials or send to other network drives. With these insights, Denver can make appropriate short-term vehicle decisions and long-term strategic plans for the city’s fleet.

Protecting Privacy, Improving Safety

Samsara Connected Operations Cloud offers strong privacy protections, according to the company — a factor that is vitally important to government agencies. Denver has enabled Samsara’s audio recording, face recognition and AI-based distracted driving features.

“It will detect if the driver’s eyes are not on the road for a few seconds and alert them,” says DOTI Chief Safety Officer John Saturley. “And mobile device detection to promote attentive driving was activated in March. This includes an in-cab coaching feature which has been quite successful in reducing distracted driving.”

Officials can set data retention for dash cam images and video when complying with official mandates or when gauging their own needs. Samsara also limits the amount of data recorded to specific conditions. The dash cams themselves store only 40 to 120 hours of video, which is overwritten when the system runs out of space. Video files are served to the Samsara cloud as prescribed. Agencies can also set roles and permissions for authorized personnel to access files.

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