SmartDrive Systems reported 30% growth in its subscriptions with a 96% increase in straight-to-rollout deployments, the privately-held company announced in its business results and operating highlights for its fiscal year ending Dec. 31.

Video is increasingly seen as a necessary safety solution, and fleets are skipping trials and instead relying on the proven track record of the SmartDrive platform to deploy quickly, saving lives and money, according to the company.

The rate of video-based safety adoption continues to increase rapidly, and SmartDrive expects growth to accelerate now that activity around the ELD mandate is winding down and fleet managers can turn their attention to safety priorities.

Independent research reinforces the need for video-based safety. Recent research from AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety states, "installing video-based safety monitoring systems on all large trucks could potentially prevent as many as 63,000 crashes, 17,733 injuries and 293 deaths annually."

"While 2017 was the year of the ELD, fleets and insurance companies are stating that 2018 will be the year of video — something we've already seen evidenced by our own significant growth," said Steve Mitgang, SmartDrive's chief executive. "Fleets are beginning to understand that it takes more than video to drive results. Our goal with transportation and video intelligence is to help drivers and fleets make better decisions faster and to eliminate the need for unfocused and partially correct data. Our platform stands apart in its ability to provide actionable information to fleets that can make a true difference in their business, instead of making the data overload problem worse."

The transportation intelligence business for SmartDrive tripled in 2017, demonstrating fleets are leveraging data to optimize operations — from driver scorecards and opportunities to reduce fuel costs to informing driver recruiting, retention and rewards.

"With a database of over 210 million risky driving events and growing, we are in the unique position to help fleets unlock new opportunities for savings," said Mitgang. "This wealth of data also positions us to inform new algorithms and technology innovation, whether in our own engineering organization or by partners who leverage our information in their product cycles. The bottom line is that SmartDrive delivers value to our customers — something backed by our SmartDrive Promise and validated by a 98% retention rate."