Nauto, a leading SaaS provider of enterprise artificial intelligence (AI) and computer vision solutions for commercial fleets and the automotive sector, today announced several new AI and feature enhancements to its Driver and Fleet Safety Platform.

The latest advanced AI capabilities from Nauto include automatic detection of four new, high-risk driver behaviors in the vehicle that trigger real-time alerts for greater driver and fleet safety and risk reduction, while also helping to streamline operations. 

Market data suggests that driver and fleet safety has become more important than ever. An analysis of data reported by State Highway Safety Offices (SHSOs) estimates that more than 6,700 pedestrians were killed on U.S. roads in 2020, up 4.8% from 2019. And, according to the National Safety Council, in 2020, motor vehicle deaths spiked by 24%, the highest increase in 96 years. For fleets, insurance costs in 2020 also increased between 10% and 15% for the third year in a row. Driver safety has become both an ethical and economic imperative, with collisions and accidents costing the industry hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

Extending its leadership in driver safety, Nauto announced advancements in its AI technology and new features that can help prevent risky behaviors that lead to collisions, including notifications and warnings for:

• Pedestrian collision

• Speeding over the posted limit

• Progressive fatigue and drowsiness

• Intersection violations

Nauto's advanced AI technology is able to track and analyze risk in real time, and when it detects covered risks it can provide preventative warnings that may give drivers critical extra time in which to respond. Notably, these warnings take advantage of more than 1.2 billion AI-processed driving miles to make them more accurate, helping to eliminate issues around alert fatigue from false alerts. With these new additions, Nauto's in-vehicle alerts and AI-informed driver coaching now address over 90 percent of weighted collision risk factors as identified by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute.

Nauto also will showcase its new Visually Enhanced Risk Assessment (VERA) Score 3.0 driver scoring system, an updated version of its risk assessment score based on 25 risk variables assessed by its smart cameras and sensors. VERA Score 3.0 summarizes driving events and behaviors into one score and provides a way to keep track of driver and fleet performance over time.

A VERA Score is calculated for each driver based on their individual trips, and is on a scale from 1 to 100, with 100 representing the best and safest driving performance score. The insights captured through VERA Score 3.0 are reported in Nauto's cloud application in both dashboard and report formats to help fleet management quickly and easily identify both top performers for recognition, as well as risky drivers with low VERA scores and the specific behaviors that require further coaching.

Nauto is further helping fleet managers gain rapid visibility into their operations by providing new, out-of-the-box reports for key performance indicators like coaching and real-time alert effectiveness, policy violations, collisions, and both top performing and at-risk drivers.

VERA 3.0 and the in-vehicle alert for speeding over posted limit are available today, while the other features are planned for release later this year.