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Deterring Distracted Driving

Windshield-mounted recorder helps correct bad habits by filming a driver and the road ahead

Brandon NixonThere's a new twist to the "How's My Driving?" bumper sticker, and it's called DriveCam -- a small windshield-mounted digital recorder that concurrently films a driver and the road ahead. A built-in accelerometer triggers the cameras to save the 8 seconds leading to and the 4 seconds after sudden acceleration, deceleration, or lateral movement. That footage then is uploaded wirelessly to trained analysts who share the information with DriveCam's customers -- mostly vehicle fleet managers and parents of teen drivers.

"I put one in my car my first week I started with the company," said Brandon Nixon, MBA '92, who joined DriveCam as CEO in September 2008. "Within six weeks I found that I was more aware of my surroundings and was a calmer driver." He also stopped using his cell phone when behind the wheel after watching videos of clients that showed how dangerous distracted driving is and how using DriveCam as a learning tool had improved their driving.

When Nixon started at DriveCam it was losing money, but he was able to help grow revenue by 40% and turn the company to cash-positive status in his first year. Customers have seen similar successes: One insurance company required all of its first-year teen drivers to use DriveCam and has seen its claims for that group drop 70%.

Nixon noted that many drivers are apprehensive about a "Big Brother" presence. He stressed that the camera saves footage only when triggered and that the goal isn't to watch every move but to raise awareness of the behaviors -- texting, phone use, falling asleep, aggressive driving, etc. -- that cause accidents and near misses.

All uploads, now totaling 15 million and growing by 4 million a year, are stored in a database. Analysts sift through the videos and offer to annual subscribers findings that will mitigate future risks. In some cases, the footage shows the cause of a near miss
or accident.

Currently more than 120,000 vehicles are deployed with DriveCam and its monitoring service. "Most people don't realize they're bad drivers because they don't get into accidents," Nixon said. "The approximately 240,000 avoidable near misses recorded by DriveCam show the reality."