TuSimple Reveals Significant Safety Advantages of Autonomous Trucking

Motor carriers can create their own driving studies to improve fleet safety.

Utilizing trucking telematics data from ELD provider Geotab, TuSimple analyzed autonomous miles driven with their technology and directly compared the data to miles driven by humans. Human operated vehicles used a benchmark rate of critical driving events per 100 miles in the same vehicle types and vocation as other motor carrier fleets.

ELD telematic devices gather millions of data points including:

– dates – time – longitude and latitude – engine power status – odometer readings – engine faults – critical events data

– harsh braking – hard turning – hard acceleration – HOS violations – idling – speeding – and more

In this study, the telematics data measured critical driving events, such as harsh acceleration, braking and cornering that can increase the risk and frequency of accidents.

Who is TuSimple?

TuSimple is a global autonomous driving technology company, headquartered in San Diego, California, with operations in Arizona, Texas, Europe, and China with hopes to transform the $4 trillion global truck freight industry.

Their AI technology makes it possible for trucks to see over .6 miles away, operate nearly continuously, and consume 10% less fuel than manually driven trucks.

TuSimple’s Telematic Autonomous Study Highlights

According to TuSimple’s report, the initial results from a 10-week sample analyzing 80,000 miles demonstrate a significant reduction in industry standard harsh driving events by TuSimple’s autonomous driving technology relative to benchmark rates and human-operated driving.

The data was collected in a variety of conditions, including day, night, rain, and extreme heat as well as on highways and surface streets.

“We’re incredibly excited about the initial study results and the potential for TuSimple’s technology to provide a new standard for safety for the trucking industry,” said Jim Mullen, Chief Administrative Officer for TuSimple. “We believe building and validating the safest and most efficient driver will save lives and truly transform our industry. Carriers rightfully cherish their multimillion-mile drivers, and TuSimple’s technology is designed to provide an even higher level of safety across our fleet partners.”

By gathering real-time insights, the data suggests that TuSimple’s autonomous technology has lower harsh event rates when contrasted with benchmark rates and human-operated driving (see chart below).

Event Type	Number of events per 100 miles (TuSimple Autonomous Technology)	Number of events per 100 miles (Industry Human-Operated Driving)
Harsh Braking	0 – 0.02	0.08 – 0.10
Harsh Acceleration	0.11 – 0.16	0.99 – 1.06
Harsh Cornering	0.04 – 0.10	1.18 – 1.89

Motor carriers can create their own driving studies to improve fleet safety

Many ELD providers, including our partner Pedigree Technologies, have created driver and safety scorecards that are easy to set-up, manage, and pull reports.

For example, Pedigree driver and safety scorecards include stats, such as:

• Number of HOS violations
• Idling greater than 20 minutes
• Idling percentage
• Hard braking event
• Speeding greater than 5mph
• Fuel efficiency
• Heavy acceleration event

These scorecards are point-based starting at 100 points and any selected stat can remove a certain amount of points based on the severity. They can be customized further by adding a timeframe duration of the stat or distance traveled.

Review the video below to gain an understanding of how Pedigree structures their scorecards.

For example, a driver can lose 15 points for every time a hard-braking event happens every 100 miles, or a driver can lose 5 points for any Hours-of-Service Util. % is under 75% per day.

Scorecard reporting can be customized by timeframe (the previous 7 days or month), selected vehicle or vehicle types (semi/long-haul trucks, medium-sized trucks, construction vehicles, etc.), and more.

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The Pedigree ELD reporting tool also shows if the driver has performed better or worse over the previous week or month.

Does your ELD provider offer similar reporting tools? If not, learn more about Pedigree Technologies. 

Learn more about how to use your ELD telematic data for customized video training and driver incentive programs.

Need help managing your ELD data?

Managing ELD data yourself can be confusing and stressful and requires a much different back-office skill set than managing paper processes. However, it does not have to be.

We offer comprehensive ELD Management Services no matter what ELD system you are using allowing you to start taking advantage of your ELD data.