E-Smart Reverse manages vehicle reverse speed to reduce crashes

When it comes to speed limiters, a lot of focus and debate has been on deciding how fast commercial vehicles should go on the highway, with the ultimate goal to accidents. But plenty of accidents happen while the vehcile isn't even going fats—or foward.

“By some estimates, backing crashes represent about 30% of commercial vehicle accidents, and most of those are preventable,” said Joe Thell, SVP at E-Smart, a dynamic speed management provider.

To drive these accidents down, the company recently announced E-Smart Reverse, a new capability that adds a backing speed limiter to reduce the risk of accidents at company and customer facilities.

“With E-Smart Reverse, we can help make yards even safer," Thell said. "By enabling the ability to limit backing speeds in company-specified speed zones, this latest feature of our dynamic speed management technology reduces the all-too-frequent occurrence of backing accidents.”

See also: Schuster equips E-Smart technology

A customer-driven feature built on E-Smart’s dynamic speed management solution for private facilities, E-Smart Reverse allows companies to set speed limits for commercial vehicles on their properties. It adds the ability to set maximum reverse speeds in geofenced locations. If a driver attempts to go faster in reverse than allowed within a company-specified speed zone, E-Smart limits the throttle and prevents the vehicle from exceeding the threshold.

Using advanced positioning technology, the E-Smart system determines the location of vehicles in real-time and allows fleets to manage and customize vehicle speeds to posted speed limits using the E-Smart customer portal. The E-Smart system communicates with an ECU that is installed in the truck to control the throttle. E-Smart integrates with onboard telematics units to provide drivers with verbal notifications and an enhanced user experience.