Reliance Motor Services of York has seen success with its rollout of Road Restriction Alerts from Ticketer to counter risks to its vehicles, customers and staff from archways and other architecture.
The platform uses a national database of road constraints coupled to fine-tuning to suit the operator’s circumstances. When such a potential hazard is detected via geofencing, the Ticketer electronic ticketing machine (ETM) displays and sounds an alert to the driver, and records the event on the back-office system for audit purposes.
That allows parameters for the alerts to be tweaked so that drivers continue to trust the accuracy of the Road Restriction Alerts module and to ensure that the system is fit for purpose, Ticketer says.
The supplier worked with Reliance to tailor data in the Road Restriction Alerts package to meet its needs. Geofences were adjusted via the Ticketer portal to ensure that alerts were only issued in the correct places and that local edits are synchronised with the list of restricted roads on the national database.
Ticketer adds that the alerts system is flexible and can be adjusted as required. It utilises geofences for both height and width restrictions, but they are edited and modified, or even removed entirely, to prevent false positives being sent to the ETM.
Reliance has been using the system for over a year and it has generated positive feedback from drivers. The Ticketer ETMs generate a different sound to that caused by any other function when an alert is triggered. A previous warning package generated alerts too frequently, causing them to be ‘tuned out’ or turned off, Ticketer adds.
Says Reliance Director Gary Newby: “The alerts are done in such a way that it is very different to other sounds the ETM makes. Drivers used to get narrative fatigue with the old system – constant notices and noises, so they did not always listen.”
Operations Manager Chris Thompson adds that bridge strike prevention is a key matter for the bus industry and that the Ticketer system goes a long way to mitigating that risk. “Operationally, this is gold dust,” he says.
