Crystal Ball managing director Raj Singh
A major supplier of ambulance and courier services to the NHS has undertaken a ground-breaking scheme to enhance its drivers’ skills and improve the safety of its patients using dashcam footage from Crystal Ball’s innovative SmartCam system.
Leeds-based ERS Medical has a scheme in place in which in-ambulance footage is reviewed between its in-house trainer and the drivers, as well as driver league tables and a full training programme for new employees, with the result that there have been fewer incidents, with vehicle downtime and running costs reduced too.
“As a patient transport service, this shows the level of excellence that ERS Medical strives for, and wants its drivers to attain, in that they sit down for one-on-one discussions with a driver trainer to review their performance,” says Crystal Ball managing director Raj Singh. “It also shows the level of detail and the wide range of information our dashcams now give fleets to manage their assets and improve driving standards.”
With nearly 800 drivers, technicians and nurses, ERS Medical completes more than 1.5 million journeys a year. The business required a telematics solution which offered a combined system of both fleet tracking and a forward-facing video camera which relayed footage in real time should there be any exceptional incident.
Steve Dixon, ERS Medical fleet driver trainer, explains: “Using Crystal Ball gives us the next level of assessment, and is a tool that is key to our business. What is very important is reducing the number of incidents, but accidents happen, and what the system has achieved is reducing the cost of these accidents, and reducing driver speeds so the incidents we do have are less severe, vehicles are off the road for less time and staff are not off work due to injuries, which is of course hugely important. We walk them through the incident, for investigation purposes and for post-incident management, to improve driver awareness and safety.”
Jeroen van Os, finance director, ERS Medical adds: “The Crystal Ball tracking system is very successful in mitigating accident claim circumstances, and we use it to ensure we know where our vehicles are at any given time, and also where they are en-route for patient or courier pick-up services.”
