Dive Brief:
- All J.B. Hunt tractors will be equipped with driver-facing cameras within the next 18 to 24 months in an effort to improve safety, a company executive said during its earnings call last week.
- Installing inward-facing cameras will “help address the distracted driving and other coachable activities with our driving workforce,” COO and President of Contract Services Nick Hobbs told analysts.
- J.B. Hunt has been piloting the technology for more than a year, a company representative told Transport Dive in an email. Hobbs said the company is encouraged by the progress it has seen with the technology and its deployment.
Dive Insight:
“Safety is an important part of our culture at J.B. Hunt, and we continue to explore ways to make our fleet the safest on the road,” Hobbs told Transport Dive in an email. “Inward-facing cameras are one of the latest developments that we can leverage to advance that initiative.”
In-cab cameras, when combined with corrective truck driver training, could annually reduce truck- and bus-involved fatalities by 801, and prevent more than 25,000 truck and bus injury crashes, annually, according to a recent report by the American Transportation Research Institute.
Despite being widely available, concerns regarding driver privacy highlighting driver negligence has hindered industry adoption of cameras, the report found.
J.B. Hunt has continuously sought ways to improve its safety performance for nearly three decades. In 1996, for instance, the company began rewarding drivers who dedicated themselves to accident-free driving.
More recently in 2006, the carrier began supplementing the Department of Transportation urine drug test with hair testing, which resulted in an 87% decrease in DOT post-accident positive rates, Hobbs said.
In 2011, company introduced forward collision warning systems, which led to a nearly 50% reduction in rear-end accident frequency, and forward facing cameras in 2016, which led to an 18% reduction in collision frequency every million miles, Hobbs said.
