The key selling point of dash cameras has long been the promise to improve driver safety with the benefit of exoneration in the event of an accident in which a fleet driver wasn’t at fault.
Dash cam vendors have been developing on that with the addition of auxiliary cameras for expanded views and AI-powered driver alerts that assure fewer false positives.
Now, one dash cam provider is unlocking a new realm of use cases for dash cameras with real-time natural language search, powered by on-device edge AI intelligence. Netradyne’s Video LiveSearch enables fleets to search across every vehicle in real-time to instantly uncover the most meaningful videos.
“The key difference is speed and accessibility. What previously required a safety manager to spend hours scrubbing through video – or worse, never finding the footage at all – now takes seconds with a simple search query,” said Pramod Akkarachittor, chief product officer at Netradye. “That opens up use cases that were technically possible but practically impossible before.”
The recording function is triggered by an event in some dash cameras, while others record 100% of drive time, using AI to identify events. The former limits use cases to video recorded during an event, which can be useful for driver coaching and exoneration. The latter is limited by cloud processing delays, the manual identification of timeframes of interest to download, and a fleet manager’s availability to sift through hours of downloaded footage.
The new LiveSearch feature enables fleets to instantly find what they’re looking for by searching keywords or phrases, rather than digging through footage or waiting for a report from Netradyne, which provides comprehensive driver performance analytics and coaching workflows. Fleets have access to GreenZone scores, trend reports, industry benchmarking, driver rankings and coaching effectiveness summaries.
Akkarachittor said LiveSearch complements those existing analytics by making it easier to find the right coaching moments.
“Instead of being limited to short, triggered video clips, safety managers can now search for specific scenarios across their entire video archive to build more complete coaching context,” he said. “It's about giving them the full story, not just the moment the system flagged. An example of this could be ‘show me any vehicle that encountered a locked gate today.’”
Another example Akkarachittor gave is a safety manager searching, "worker without a hardhat" at a job site. He said they may find instances from a day or week prior where drivers weren't following protocol. But because nobody got hurt, no alert was triggered, and no incident report was filed. Now, they can intervene with targeted coaching before an actual safety event occurs, he said, adding that the same concept applies to distracted driving patterns, loading dock procedures, or any behavior that increases risk but has yet to result in an incident.
“It's about having visibility into the warning signs in your existing footage, not waiting for the system to tell you something went wrong,” he said.
Netradyne Co-Founder and CEO Avneesh Agrawal said this enables fleets to shift from a reactive to a proactive safety and operational approach.
“Video LiveSearch is the fleet industry’s first on-device, real-time search capability, giving fleets faster situational awareness to proactively understand what’s happening across their operations,” Agrawal said.
By making patterns, precursors and risk signals immediately become discoverable, teams can intervene earlier, adjust behavior and prevent recurrence. In that sense, search turns past data into forward-looking action, Akkarachittor said.
Beyond safety
This feature takes dash cameras beyond proactive driver coaching, safety and exoneration. Akkarachittor said it reveals where AI delivers the greatest operational value by surfacing patterns in real-world fleet activity.
“Through natural-language search across video, teams quickly see which events, behaviors and conditions recur and where risk, inefficiency or manual effort consistently concentrates,” he said. “These insights provide an evidence-based guide for deeper AI investment, allowing fleets to focus automation on the moments that matter most, rather than relying on assumptions.”
These are some other use cases he offered:
• Protect their business: Instantly retrieve footage for insurance claims, accident investigations and fraud prevention.
• Enhance fleet operations: Provide additional context into vehicle utilization, route delays and work optimization.
• Improve operations: Verify delivery completion, investigate customer disputes, and document loading dock incidents without reviewing hours of footage.
• Reduce costs: Quickly locate evidence of road hazards that caused vehicle damage, supporting warranty claims and infrastructure damage reports to municipalities.
Akkarachittor said Netradyne customers are already experimenting beyond traditional safety applications, including job-site verification, proof-of-service and maintenance reviews.
“Video LiveSearch transforms fleet video from a safety tool into a broader operational intelligence platform,” Akkarachittor said.
Netradyne’s edge intelligence learns patterns in real-world road scenes and driving behavior, enabling LiveSearch to instantly match a simple search prompt to the most relevant video footage.
Every free-text search surfaces before-during-after video clips for a single vehicle or across an entire fleet. With no wait time for cloud downloads, it provides near-instant discovery of which clips to download instead of fleets having to manually chase details like vehicle, date or trip and hoping a video request hits the mark.
The feature is available on Netradyne’s D-810 dash camera, which provides up to eight camera views. The first release supports searches on road-facing camera views only, but when fleets download a video clip they've identified via Video LiveSearch, the full multi-camera video is still available if those additional cameras are installed – side, rear, and auxiliary views, all stitched together.
“We're seeing strong demand for full multi-angle search capability,” Akkarachittor said. “Later, we'll extend this functionality to other camera views, which will unlock significant value for loading dock operations, cargo verification and 360-degree incident reconstruction.”
