Celtrak / Fleetwatch

shay123

Not sure which section to put this one in.

Does anyone have any experience of Celtrak / Fleetwatch in Ireland. A pal of mine is being diciplined at work for excess speed using the company celtrak system.

How accurate is the system in terms of speed compliance on the road and where would he stand in terms of diciplinary proceedure and could he loose his job. Two breaches are stated both on the same day, one of which he reckons he was parked up and stationary. The second is over a two and half hour period and states that he was doing 90 k in an 80 limit. Any thoughts ???

Jimjay

Normally very accurate, could be more accurate that the vehicles spedo. Unless he can prove he was stationary i cant see why they wouldnt believe the figures.

My guess would be a warning, unless he already has a warning.

antoinolachtnai

I would not be that confident in the speeds that are returned from the GPS at a given point. You would really need to ask Celtrak whether they are happy to stand over the accuracy of the speeds returned.

If you did the following, I would be confident enough in the results:

- establish a start point and an end point for which the speed is being tested. Obviously, you would need to know what time the vehicle was at each of these points. There would really need to be at least a kilometer or two between the points to get a good read. The points would need to be on open road to give the best chance of an accurate GPS read. Ideally, the GPS read would include an accuracy rating. GPS's accuracy depends on how many satellites are in view.

- find out the travel time between the two points by subtraction. Convert this into hours.

- establish the exact distance between these start and end points. I would prefer to do this by measuring it in person (on a calibrated vehicle tachometer or with a measuring wheel) rather than depending on a map. The reason is that road distance is not always accurate on maps. It depends on how accurately the map has accounted for the curves on the road and the rise and fall of the terrain.

- divide the distance between the points by the time it took to travel. That will tell you the speed.

I am guessing your pal's employer did not do this. If he gets the GPS data, however, he will be able to calculate this for himself. In these circumstances, he would certainly be entitled to a copy of the data.

Is there a tachograph on the vehicle? That would be a much more dependable measure.

There could be a legal data protection issue with using the GPS data in this way, depending on what the stated purpose of the system is and what it says in his contract. Your pal should consult with his union if he is in one. NERA or the Data Protection Commissioner might also be of help.

Sponge Bob

You would really want 15 mins worth of data and the 1 minute intervals in there for proof.

L1011

Tracking systems are generally quite accurate for the actual speed but the data set for limits they have can be woefully inaccurate. Unless its over 120 / over 80 for a truck it'll be very difficult to prove that the limit the system claims was in place was actually the limit in place.

Its a rare employer that actually cares, I've seen the "violations" list from ours in work and there is usually three figures, per car, per day... and the bulk of them are for doing >80 in an "80 zone" which happens to be the majority of the motorway network. Not Celtrak but the underlying mapping and limit data available for Ireland is crap across the board.

shay123

Thats all very interesting so far, thanks all for the time to post.