Patent Issued for Vehicle Monitoring Devices And Methods For Managing Man Down Signals (USPTO 10,522,033)

2020 JAN 13 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Transportation Daily News -- According to news reporting originating from Alexandria, Virginia, by NewsRx journalists, a patent by the inventors McClellan, Scott (Heber City, UT); Follmer, Todd (Coto de Caza, CA); Catten, Jonathan C. (Salt Lake City, UT); Capps, Eric (Salt Lake City, UT); Ord, Dave (Salt Lake City, UT); Eyre, Richard (Salt Lake City, UT); Russon, Verlin (Lehi, UT); Maynard, Ed (Salt Lake City, UT), filed on November 13, 2017, was published online on January 13, 2020.

The assignee for this patent, patent number 10,522,033, is Inthinc LLC (Rochelle Park, New Jersey, United States).

Reporters obtained the following quote from the background information supplied by the inventors: “The present invention relates generally to a system and method for monitoring driver behavior and vehicle driving conditions and, more particularly, to a system and method for comparing driving speed to a speed-by-street database to identify speeding violations and/or errors in the speed-by-street database.

“The present invention relates generally to asset management and, more particularly, to a fleet management system incorporating comprehensive driver monitoring/mentoring and asset monitoring capabilities in order to improve driver safety and reduce fuel and maintenance costs across a fleet of vehicles. Advantageously, the fleet management system is fully-configurable at all times including during installation of the system as well as during operation thereof. In addition, the present invention relates to a system and method for monitoring driver behavior for use by consumers or the general public such that parents may remotely mentor the driving habits of their teen children as well as allow for monitoring of geographic areas into which their children may enter. Also, the present invention provides a means for recording impulse forces experienced by a vehicle during a crash event in order to provide real-time notification to fleet management personnel as well as to provide data which may facilitate accident reconstruction and which may be used in the courtroom and by the auto insurance industry.

“A recent study released by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) indicated that driver error was ten times more likely to be the cause of truck-related accidents as compared to other factors such as poor road conditions, weather and mechanical malfunctions. Specifically, the study indicated that certain driver factors such as speeding, inattention, fatigue and unfamiliarity with roads accounted for 88 percent of all crashes involving large trucks. As a means to reduce truck-related accidents, the FMCSA study recommended that greater attention be focused on developing systems for monitoring at-risk driver behavior in commercial motor vehicle fleets in order to improve driver safety.

“Losses as a result of accidents involving large truck crashes includes property damage to vehicle and structures as well as personal injury to drivers, occupants and occasionally bystanders. In addition to the financial losses and injuries resulting from truck crashes, fleet operators incur losses as a result of excess fuel and maintenance costs, as well as losses due to inefficient management of individual vehicles in the fleet as well as groups of fleet vehicles such as those located in a specific geographic area. Fleet operators may also suffer losses as a result of vehicle theft, inefficient vehicle routing as a result of unforeseen adverse road conditions along a route, and human losses such as may occur when the driver is injured while performing extravehicular duties.

“Included in the prior art are several systems which attempt to address either the problem of driver error as a cause of accidents or by attempting to reduce losses due to inefficient fleet management. For example, U.S. Patent Publication No. 2004/0039504 assigned to Fleet Management Services, Inc., discloses a fleet management information system for identifying the location and direction of movement of each vehicle in the fleet. The Fleet Management Services application discloses that each vehicle in the fleet is in communication directly with management offices in real-time to report vehicle location and heading as well as the status of certain events in which the vehicle may be engaged.

“One of the stated objects of the fleet management system disclosed in the application is to improve the availability of fleet management information to owners and operators so as to improve vehicle tracking and enhanced communication within the fleet to increase asset profitability. The application indicates that the above-mentioned objects are facilitated by providing the capability to locate vehicles in the fleet in real-time as well as improving the efficiency of wireless communication within the fleet.

“Although the application assigned to Fleet Management Services, Inc., as disclosed above is understood to provide improved fleet business management by minimizing gap times in time division multiple access (TDMA) networks during data transmissions, the application is not understood to address the issue of monitoring driver behavior and/or driver performance in order to improve driver safety and asset health. Furthermore, the application disclosed above is not understood to improve other aspects of fleet operation such as improving fuel economy and reducing maintenance costs of a fleet. In this regard, the application is only understood to improve communication within the fleet and is not understood to improve the amount of information available regarding the operation of each vehicle such that analysis of similar problems may be performed in order to establish trends and ultimately correct problems over time.

“U.S. Pat. No. 6,124,810 issued to Segal et al. and assigned to Qualcomm, Inc. discloses a method for determining when a vehicle has arrived and departed from a specific location. More particularly, the Segal patent discloses an apparatus having an on-board mobile communication terminal for receiving destination information wirelessly from a central facility. The apparatus incorporates velocity data from a vehicle speedometer in combination with a communication satellite system in order to provide vehicle position data to a processor.

“The processor, located on-board the vehicle, uses speed and position data to determine the vehicle arrival or departure times which is wireless transmitted to the central facility. Although the device of the Segal patent is understood to improve fleet efficiency due to its autonomous transmission of arrival and departure times between a vehicle and a dispatch center, the Segal patent is not understood to address the issue of reducing aggressive driver behavior such as reducing speeding which would improve fleet safety.

“U.S. Pat. No. 5,638,077 issued to Martin and assigned to Rockwell International Corporation discloses a fleet management that transmits vehicle positional data to a base station with a time annotation. The positional data further includes velocity data as well as the identity of satellites observed. In this manner, the fleet management system of the Martin reference ostensibly improves fleet management capability by improving the accuracy of GPS positional and directional information. However, the device fails to address the above-noted problems associated with improving driver behavior in fleet operations in order to reduce accident rates and lower fleet operation costs.”

In addition to obtaining background information on this patent, NewsRx editors also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent: “As can be seen, there exists a need in the art for a driver mentoring system adaptable for use in commercial fleet operations that monitors at risk and/or unsafe driver behavior and provides mentoring to the driver in order to reduce adverse driver actions and inactions that may lead to accidents. In addition, there exists a need in the art for a driver mentoring system that allows for accurate vehicle tracking at a base station and which can incorporate a third party mapping database in order to provide maximum road speed data for any particular location on a road such that the driver may avoid speeding violations and/or maintain safe, legal, and established speed limits.

“Furthermore, there exists a need in the art for a vehicle behavior monitoring system that records velocity and acceleration impulse forces imposed on a vehicle during a crash for use in accident reconstruction for insurance claim and courtroom purposes. Finally, there exists a need in the art for a vehicle behavior monitoring system that provides for real-time reconfiguration of driver performance and vehicle operation parameters from a base station to individual vehicles in a fleet and which allows for reporting of such data in order to generate driver profiles and trends, calculate fuel and mileage tax and create hours of service reports in compliance with federal requirements.

“The present invention specifically addresses the above-mentioned needs associated with fleet management by providing a unique vehicle monitoring system specifically adapted to mentor driver performance in order to improve driver safety and reduce accident rates as well as reduce fuel and maintenance costs (as a secondary benefit to good driving behavior--driving the speed limit on paved roads and driving specified and/or configured speed limits on non-paved roads).

“In another aspect of the invention, the vehicle monitoring system allows for the recording of crash impulse forces acting on the vehicle during an accident for accident reconstruction purposes and for insurance and injury claim purposes. Fleet utilization is improved by real-time or over-time tracking by GPS of all vehicles in the fleet or tracking per geographic zone, by group, and individually.

“The present invention also generates automated International Fuel Tax Agreement (IFTA) reports, mileage reports, hours-of-service (HOS) reports required by the Department of Transportation (DOT) and provides real-time updates on driver behavior and vehicle operation that is accessible anywhere via the internet. Advantageously, the system is fully-configurable in all aspects and at any time including reconfiguring during installation of the system as well as during operation. For example, the invention provides a means by which fleet management can reconfigure the vehicle monitoring system by remote command in order to revise various system parameters such as the type of data to be reported and how often. Conversely, the system can be reconfigured at the vehicle in a comprehensive manner.

“Two-way communication between the fleet vehicles and the base station or server allows for notification of fleet management and/or safety personnel during an emergency, during an exception event such as excessive speeding or swerving by a driver, or to allow drivers to report in at specific intervals and times or upon the occurrence of specific events.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“What is claimed is:

“1. A vehicle monitoring device installed in a vehicle, comprising: a GPS receiver that is configured to identify a GPS location of the vehicle monitoring device; a timer that is manually activatable and that is configured to expire, subsequent to being activated, after a predetermined period of time unless the timer is deactivated prior to expiration of the timer; and a monitoring command module that is connected to the GPS receiver and the timer and that is configured to transmit different signals to a remote server, the different signals including a GPS signal that identifies the GPS location of the vehicle monitoring device and a man down signal in response to detecting the expiration of the timer, wherein the monitoring command module transmits the man down signal in response to detecting the expiration of the timer which occurs in response to the timer being manually activated and without being deactivated prior to the expiration of the timer, and wherein the vehicle monitoring device is connected to the vehicle and the timer is manually activated by a user within the vehicle, but wherein the timer expires and the man down signal is transmitted while the user is outside of the vehicle.

“2. The vehicle monitoring device of claim 1, wherein the monitoring command module is configured to transmit the different signals to the remote server according to a sequence defined by a hierarchy in which the man down signal has a higher priority than a crash event signal that is generated by the monitoring command module in response to detecting a crash event with a vehicle attached to the vehicle monitoring device.

“3. The vehicle monitoring device of claim 1, wherein the monitoring command module is configured to transmit the different signals to the remote server according to a sequence defined by a hierarchy in which the man down signal has a lower priority than a crash event signal that is generated by the monitoring command module in response to detecting a crash event with a vehicle attached to the vehicle monitoring device.

“4. The vehicle monitoring device of claim 1, wherein the vehicle monitoring device further comprises a panic button which, when pressed, causes the monitoring command module to send a panic signal to the remote server.

“5. The vehicle monitoring device of claim 4, wherein the monitoring command module is configured to transmit the different signals to the remote server according to a sequence defined by a hierarchy in which the man down signal has a lower priority than the panic signal.

“6. The vehicle monitoring device of claim 4, wherein the monitoring command module is configured to transmit the different signals to the remote server according to a sequence defined by a hierarchy in which the man down signal has a higher priority than the panic signal.

“7. The vehicle monitoring device of claim 1, wherein the predetermined period of time is an hour.

“8. The vehicle monitoring device of claim 1, wherein the predetermined period of time is a period of time other than an hour.

“9. A method for operating a vehicle monitoring device installed in a vehicle that includes a GPS receiver, a timer and a monitoring command module, the method comprising: utilizing the GPS receiver to identify a GPS location of the vehicle monitoring device; activating the timer, wherein the timer expires after a predetermined period of time, subsequent to being activated, unless the timer is deactivated prior to expiration of the timer; and utilizing the monitoring command module, which is connected to the GPS receiver and the timer, to transmit different signals to a remote server, the different signals including a GPS signal that identifies the GPS location of the vehicle monitoring device and a man down signal in response to detecting the expiration of the timer, wherein the monitoring command module transmits the man down signal in response to detecting the expiration of the timer which occurs in response to the timer being manually activated and without being deactivated prior to the expiration of the timer, and wherein the vehicle monitoring device is connected to the vehicle and the timer is manually activated by a user within the vehicle, but wherein the timer expires and the man down signal is transmitted while the user is outside of the vehicle.

“10. The method of claim 9, wherein the monitoring command module transmits the different signals to the remote server according to a sequence defined by a hierarchy in which the man down signal has a higher priority than a crash event signal that is generated by the monitoring command module in response to detecting a crash event with a vehicle attached to the vehicle monitoring device.

“11. The method of claim 9, wherein the monitoring command module transmits the different signals to the remote server according to a sequence defined by a hierarchy in which the man down signal has a lower priority than a crash event signal that is generated by the monitoring command module in response to detecting a crash event with a vehicle attached to the vehicle monitoring device.

“12. The method of claim 9, wherein the vehicle monitoring device further comprises a panic button and wherein the method further includes generating a panic signal in response to detecting a manual activation of the panic button.

“13. The method of claim 12, wherein the monitoring command module transmits the different signals to the remote server according to a sequence defined by a hierarchy in which the man down signal has a lower priority than the panic signal.

“14. The method of claim 12, wherein the monitoring command module transmits the different signals to the remote server according to a sequence defined by a hierarchy in which the man down signal has a higher priority than the panic signal.

“15. The method of claim 9, wherein the predetermined period of time is an hour.

“16. The method of claim 9, wherein the predetermined period of time is a period of time other than an hour.”

For more information, see this patent: McClellan, Scott; Follmer, Todd; Catten, Jonathan C.; Capps, Eric; Ord, Dave; Eyre, Richard; Russon, Verlin; Maynard, Ed. Vehicle Monitoring Devices And Methods For Managing Man Down Signals. U.S. Patent Number 10,522,033, filed November 13, 2017, and published online on January 13, 2020. Patent URL: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=10,522,033.PN.&OS=PN/10,522,033RS=PN/10,522,033

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