It’s a sad fact that people still operate vehicles while intoxicated, and this continues to bring disastrous results for motorists and pedestrians. Japan is also grappling with this problem, and in an effort to prevent accidents, new legislation was introduced in April 2022 to require drivers of commercial vehicles to be tested for intoxication before driving.
To smoothly facilitate these obligatory alcohol impairment tests, SoftBank Corp. (TOKYO: 9434) is providing a solution called "Smart Fleet.” Smart Fleet addresses specific challenges businesses are facing, including:
- Increased workloads and costs for conducting alcohol impairment checks
- Conducting alcohol impairment checks across multiple locations
Smart Fleet is a system developed by SoftBank that has been used internally since 2016 to ensure that employees drive safely when using company-owned vehicles or rental cars. The cloud service now enables businesses to centrally manage vehicle information, including checks on drivers using alcohol detectors. By simply launching an app on a smartphone and driving, Smart Fleet can record location information and driving routes in real time, enabling efficient fleet management. Since Smart Fleet can manage vehicle information and driver impairment checks, it helps businesses conduct their operations with greater ease and efficiency, and make roads safer as a result. Test results are uploaded to the cloud, eliminating the need to manually record test results on paper or send reports via email.
Tomoaki Yamazaki, an employee at SoftBank’s IoT Data Business Promotion Department that works on Smart Fleet, commented, "The new legislation has provided companies a good opportunity to thoroughly reconsider what constitutes safe driving. Our goal is to create a service that enables the continuity of safe driving management, including alcohol impairment checks, with the greatest ease possible. We also want to ensure that drivers themselves are conducting the checks, so we’re working to prevent fraudulent testing by using technologies such as facial recognition."
(Posted on November 21, 2023)
by SoftBank News Editors
