High Impact and Rollover Alert Feature

Feature Release Document

Open PDF to view

What is it?

The High Impact (g-force) and Rollover Detection Alert Feature will supplement organisations’ health and safety policies to enhance the ability to respond to driver distress resulting from a vehicle emergency (adverse event).

The feature is intended to detect and report on adverse events that involve vehicle collisions and rollover of such severity that the driver may be rendered unable to communicate via normal means. It is not intended to detect all collisions, particularly at low-speed impacts e.g. fender-benders (refer to the expected performance for further detail).

Features include:

• The ability to display an adverse event on the Smartrak map site in (near) real time.

• The ability to send alerts via the cellular or satellite networks

• Notifications that improve emergency response times by detailing the status and last known location of where an adverse event occurred.

• The ability to forward onto third party monitoring companies.

The Alert Feature contains two distinct methods of monitoring the forces generated when a vehicle is involved in adverse event.

These include:

• Impact Detection - monitors the front, back and side for sudden large changes in acceleration.

• Rollover - detects when a vehicle is no longer upright (rolling over and coming to rest on its side or roof).

How it works

Smartrak’s Automatic Vehicle Locator (AVL) device (see Limitations section below), securely fitted and located in the vehicle, monitors the accelerometer, checking for the three forms of adverse events above.  When detected, the AVL will send an event to the Smartrak AVL Gateway, notifying it that an adverse event has occurred.  This will be presented to any monitoring users on the map site, and through notifications to registered people.  The emergency event comes through as shown below:

Open

SMS alerts contain a cut down version of the email above, supplying the vehicle involved, date and time, location, and type of adverse event.

See this article for more information - What does an emergency alert email/SMS consist of?

Expected feature performance

It is important to know the types of events that the AVL will and will not report on to fully understand the intended use of the feature, and its expected behaviour given a variety of situations that Smartrak identified through its development and testing phase.

The following types of events are particularly important for the monitoring users to identify with in the case of an alert.

Open

While we do not provide alert reporting for low-speed impacts and impact with smaller mass, Smartrak can provide Crash Reporting that has detailed information on incident events collected by the AVL unit, such as history, speed, g-force, vehicle, and driver information. 

Limitations

The High Impact and Rollover Detection Alert Feature must not be used as the sole means of any health and safety policy. It should only be used as a supplementary measure.

As identified in the expected performance, the AVLs are not to be relied on to detect all adverse events on the road, furthermore there may be certain conditions where false positive alerts are generated.

The feature will not function under these conditions:

• The feature is disabled via the Smartrak administration site.

• The AVL is not calibrated, mounted or installed properly.

• The AVL is damaged or faulty either before or as a result of the adverse event.

Versions R8 & R9 are compatible with HIR.

Creating and managing alerts - Self-Help guide

Click on link to open

How to create and manage SMS and Email Alerts

Turning the HIR/OS feature on/off

What

The Smartrak Admin has the ability to turn High Impact and Rollover Feature Alerts on and off.

How

Log into Smartrak Admin

1. Click on 'Alert' in the left hand list

2. Then click on 'High Impact and Rollover Status'

3. Find the vehicle you wish to change the alert status of

4. Add ‘reason for changing the state’

5. Then change the status by clicking on the blue button below

Emergency alert monitoring and escalation process example

While each organisation has various internal health and safety regulations and processes to adhere to, Smartrak has observed the following emergency escalation process to be common to its customers:

HIR Suppression Geofences

It is recommended that HIR Suppression Geofences are created around any service centres where an installer/technician may work on tracked vehicles.

This is so false alerts generated by a technician working on an AVL unit (vehicle swap etc) are suppressed and do not alert on the map or send the alert text or email to HIR alert recipients.

This can be arranged with your Customer Success Manager.

(Please note that HIR Suppression Geofences do not suppress any non-HIR emergency events such as emergency alerts from illuminated dash switches or inovonics pendants)