Prosecutors from the U.S. Justice Department argued to the federal appeals court last week that the government should be allowed to place GPS tracking devices on vehicles without having to obtain a search warrant, reports the Wall Street Journal.

The argument aims to preserve the ability to obtain evidence through warrantless GPS tracking, but is in direct contradiction to a Supreme Court ruling handed down in January stating that installation of a GPS tracker device without a warrant is in violation of the U.S. Constitution. Read the rest of this entry »

Tougher licensing requirements for teenage drivers could cut teen crash deaths by 500 lives annually or at least by 50 percent, according to a study published on May 31, 2012 by The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, an independent, nonprofit industry group dedicated to reducing road crashes and associated injuries, property damage, and deaths.

The Institutes states five key driving law components that could help reduce teen crash deaths:

1. permit age
2. practice driver hours
3. night driving
4. license age
5. teen passenger restrictions

Research has demonstrated that the states with the strongest driving laws among 15-to-17 year old drivers have the largest reductions in crashes and collisions. But “Even the best states can do better,” said Anne McCartt, institute senior vice president for research. “There’s room for improvement across the board, and states could see immediate reductions in fatal crashes and collision claims as soon as the beefed-up provisions are in force.” Read the rest of this entry »

Where are your service vehicles right this minute? At a customer’s location installing or repairing units? Stuck in traffic? Pulled over to the side of the road with a flat tire? Idling in a nearby park? Being driven off by a carjacker?

With a GPS vehicle tracking system in place you can locate and follow your company vehicles 24/7 from anywhere via a web browser or web-enabled phones.

You can manage employees more effectively when they are on the road, which is important for HVAC companies since your service technicians rarely spend much time at the office.

You can use GPS system-generated reports such as starts/stops to plan routes more efficiently; excessive idling to reduce fuel costs; aggressive driving reports and speeding alerts to reduce traffic citations, improve driver safety and keep insurance costs low. Read the rest of this entry »

If you drive in Los Angles, you spend nearly 56 hours per year sitting in stop-and-go traffic. Drivers in Miami cut that time in half, spending roughly 28 hours per year sitting in stop-and-go traffic.

These are just two of the statistics compiled by INRIX, a leading traffic information provider. In its annual Traffic Scorecard Annual Report, INRIX analyzes and compares the status of traffic congestion in the nation’s top 100 cities yearly, which it has been doing since 2007.

INRIX’s Traffic Scorecard is reviewed by a number of sources, including city planners, departments of transportation, economists, academia professionals, and regular, everyday drivers, making its report a trusted resource and benchmark for understanding the nation’s traffic congestion. Read the rest of this entry »

If you have a mobile fleet, do you know the location of every vehicle…right this second?

You can if you’ve installed a GPS vehicle tracking system. Such systems typically consist of GPS trackers placed in your vehicles (either hardwired or portable). Exact vehicle locations are tracked by satellites in real time, then relay the data to a GPS server that allows you to view every vehicle online via a web browser or web-enabled smart phone from anywhere in the world, 24/7. Typically these systems also generate essential reports that present an accurate analysis of your fleet operations.   If the GPS system doesn’t track in real time, it’s considered a vehicle locator, showing where a vehicle is (or was) at a given moment. Read the rest of this entry »