The potential for danger for drivers doesn’t exist solely behind the wheel. Samsara has rolled out a new piece of hardware, this time for safety outside of the cab, to address emergency situations for lone workers.
The Samsara Wearable is a small pager-like device that clips on the driver’s person. There’s a button on the front that takes up the majority of real estate of the device. Drivers can press it if they’re in danger, in distress or in an accident, and the device will send a notification via the cloud to the fleet on the Samsara dashboard, where a bright red SOS banner will appear.
On the back-office side, fleet managers can click the banner to get additional details, including driver, vehicle and location information.
The device also has a microphone and speaker so drivers can record a message, like “I need help. I’ve fallen, and I’m injured,” and AI will transcribe that message so fleet managers can listen to it or read it alongside the notification.
“This gives us situational awareness,” said Samsara CEO Sanjit Biswas as he demonstrated how the device worked on stage during the Beyond conference held this week in San Diego. “We could be hundreds or even thousands of miles away, and we can see what happened.”
A driver’s headquarters can tap into the Samsara dash cam in the event of an accident to get a visual, but the driver may not be near the vehicle. The device can also detect how much distance the driver is from the vehicle.
And it’s all powered by Samsara’s network of millions of devices.
The device doesn’t send a signal via a cellular network, which takes a lot of energy, Biswas said. It sends a signal via the Samsara network. Because of that, the device has more than a year of battery life.
So, if there is a vehicle – any vehicle – that is connected to the Samsara network in the vicinity of the device, which has its own GPS antenna, the device can ping the network via that vehicle when the driver presses the button. From there, a fleet can find other drivers in the area where the incident occurred to dispatch to check on the driver in need. If no one is in the area, the fleet can connect to emergency services.
The device also has fall detection, which Biswas chose not to demonstrate. The wearable can automatically detect falls – or any event that causes G-Force? – like if a driver falls from a trailer, which can be useful in the event the driver is rendered unconscious.
The device isn’t just reactive. In the case of severe weather or wildfires, fleet managers can proactively check in on drivers and alert them to unsafe conditions through push notifications to the device. If a driver fails to respond to the check-in, the fleet is guided through a response workflow.
“It’s all about keeping them safe wherever they are and whenever,” Biswas said.
