By Art Liggio, President and CEO, Driving Dynamics

During the 2016 Berkshire Hathaway shareholders meeting, chairman and CEO Warren Buffett was asked about the declining financial performance of GEICO, an insurer owned by Berkshire Hathaway. Buffett responded, “Last year both frequency—how often people had accidents, and severity, which is the cost per accident—both of those went up quite suddenly and substantially.”

What are the underlying causes for these increases? In last month’s Safety & Risk column, we took a look at influencing factors driving significant increases in crash cost severity, which included:

• Increasing Average Age of Vehicles
• Mismatched Bumpers
• Collision Repair Costs Up (technology replacement costs)
• Increase of Legal Speed Limits
• Cost Shifting: Affordable Care Act

Next, let’s take a look at how frequency affects severity and overall cost increases.

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By Mark Boada, Senior Editor

The National State Conference of State Fleet Administrators (NCSFA) has selected Mercury Associates to conduct its annual benchmarking study, the first time the organization has chosen to outsource the study in its more than 20-year history.

“The conference has been doing this study for years, but we didn’t do it in a formal process like this and we didn’t do it with the assistance of an outside entity,” said Bob Williams, NCSFA president and associate director for vehicle asset management for the state of Tennessee. “Our previous studies were managed internally and involved a lot of volunteer work, but we’ve never done it at this scale or enlisted outside help like this.”

Williams said the NCSFA will reach out to more respondents for this year’s study than it ever has and will focus on more details of fleet operations as well as a “bigger picture” than previous studies. The organization’s membership consists largely of some 150 state government and state university fleets, and the survey will be sent to all of them, Williams said.

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By Suzanne Benzion, Director, Strategic Consulting, Element Fleet Management

Throughout 2017, Element’s Strategic Consulting team uncovered some note-worthy trends for our customers, and provided actionable insights against these trends.

The data told some pretty compelling stories around innovative ways to maximize productivity, improve driver safety and satisfaction and reduce overall fleet cost. Here’s an overview of the themes that surfaced in 2017, along with trends we’re monitoring in 2018.

What happened in 2017?

Safety

Safety, an evergreen concern for fleet managers, was a central focus for Strategic Insights in 2017. Predictive analytics are assisting with identifying subsets of drivers at highest risk for future accident behavior, allowing us to target interventions more effectively. We also looked into ways to mitigate high-occurrence vehicle damage claims through driver safety training and vehicle technology.

Right vehicle, right job — READ MORE

The Verge

Pedestrians will need to receive and interpret messages and intentions from autonomous vehicles, such as when to walk and where to go. What will that look and sound like?

Uber has filed a patent application that proposes wrapping its self-driving cars in flashing signs to effectively communicate messages to pedestrians and others around it; Google and Drive.ai are working on something similar.

“As operators, we have a high certainty about what the car is doing and what it plans to do,” Sean Chin, a product designer at Uber’s Advanced Technology Group says. “What we need to do is enable pedestrians to interpret this behavior on their own.”

Read the article at The Verge.

The Telegraph

There are plenty of naysayers about fuel-cell technology, but fuel cells are here and their number will grow as part of a wide variety of automobile power solutions of the future.

The advantages of hydrogen fuel cells over internal combustion engines and battery-electric motors as vehicular propulsion include emissions, range and charging time.

“Hydrogen is like money,” said one expert, “it is all around us, but it doesn’t necessarily belong to you.”

Read the article at The Telegraph.

The New York Times

Phantom Auto is working on remote control systems, often referred to as teleoperation, that many see as a necessary safety feature for the autonomous cars of the future.

Even the most sophisticated vehicles will not be infallible – a fallen tree, a sinkhole, a string of strange pylons, a flash flood, a fire or some other obstruction on a lonely road could make an autonomous car stop safely, but then what?

A car in need of help would automatically contact a Phantom Auto center, where a remote operator could use the car’s cameras and sensors to see what was happening, then maneuver the vehicle out of trouble – but someone will still have to come out and fix your flat tire.

Read the article at The New York Times.

Economic Times

According to a recent report produced by independent research organization A.T. Kearney Energy Transition Institute, automobile manufacturers will face challenges surfacing from supply shortages of natural resources for battery production as they move to electrify their fleet in line with government mandate to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

“Electric car batteries rely on a host of rare materials —from lithium and nickel to cobalt. Battery makers around the world are struggling to secure supplies of these key ingredients as demand outstrips supply. This undoubtedly places pressure on carmakers, so the hunt for alternative technologies is on,” explained Romain Debarre, managing director, A.T. Kearney Energy Transition Institute.

Cobalt, the report held, is in particularly short supply globally and reserves could be depleted completely by the time 300 million EVs are produced —a modest proportion compared to the 1.2 billion cars on roads today.

Read the article at Economic Times.

Forbes

An Arizona woman was struck and killed on a city street in Tempe by an Uber autonomous vehicle built by Volvo with a “safety driver” on board. Uber, however, made its own engineering and software changes on the test car. Local police, the U.S. Department of Transportation and both companies are investigating the accident.

It’s the second autonomous vehicle fatality. In 2016, a Tesla test driver was killed when the vehicle, in self-driving mode, struck a semi on a Florida highway.

“According to the Tempe police department, the vehicle, a Volvo XC90, was operating in ‘autonomous mode’ with a human ‘safety driver’ behind the wheel at the time of the accident. Elaine Herzberg, 49, was walking her bicycle in the street outside of a crosswalk when the vehicle hit her.

“Uber issued a statement that it has suspended testing of its autonomous vehicles in Tempe, San Francisco, Toronto and Pittsburgh… The Tempe accident could establish the first batch of case law for autonomous vehicles should the victim’s family press a case of liability. It will be a challenge for the courts, say lawyers.

Read the article at Forbes.

Chicago Tribune

Ford is refreshing or revamping its entire aging lineup of SUVs while adding gas-electric hybrid powertrains, two new off-road SUVs and two new trucks.

The current model lineup is among the industry’s oldest, and the new products should help dealers who have struggled against competitors with fresher vehicles.

“I have a reinvigorated view of the future,” said Richard Bazzy, who runs a Ford dealership in Pittsburgh’s northern suburbs and is among dealers who have been critical of company management. “We’ve been waiting for a long time. We weren’t sure what we were waiting for. Now we know.”

Read the article at Chicago Tribune.

Bloomberg

Solar storms can sever the data connection between a vehicle’s global-position system and the satellites that supply location information.

In the event of solar trouble, computer-driven cars would pull over and wait for connectivity to return. Self-driving systems should not be overly reliant on GPS.

“At the very least, in the event of solar disruption, there is enough redundancy for the car to calmly pull itself over and stop, said Danny Shapiro, senior director of the automotive unit at Nvidia Corp., which makes chips and artificial intelligence systems for Uber Inc. and a wide range of automakers. Automated vehicles can operate quite well, even when online connectivity is hampered.”

Read the article at Bloomberg.