Every GPS tracker already records speed, position and ignition several times a minute. Put those together and you have a record of how each driver drives: how fast, how hard they brake, how long they idle, whether they drive at night, whether they stay on the route. Fleets that use this well see fewer accidents, fewer challans, and 5 to 10 percent lower fuel bills. Fleets that use it badly lose drivers. This guide covers what to measure and how to use it.
What GPS can measure
| Behaviour | How GPS sees it | Reliability |
|---|---|---|
| Overspeeding | Speed above a set limit, per vehicle or per road type | High. Speed from GPS is accurate to 1 to 2 km/h |
| Harsh braking and acceleration | Sudden change in speed between two position reports; accelerometer on better devices | Medium. Needs a device reporting every 10 seconds or an accelerometer; otherwise many events are missed or false |
| Harsh cornering | Accelerometer only | Medium, device-dependent |
| Excessive idling | Ignition on, speed zero for longer than a threshold | High, with the ignition wire connected |
| Night driving | Movement in the hours you define | High |
| Route deviation | Position outside a corridor or a geofence | High |
| Long driving without rest | Continuous movement with no stop over a set number of hours | High |
| Unauthorised use | Movement outside duty hours or outside the permitted area | High |
| Phone use, fatigue | Not visible to GPS; needs a dashcam with driver monitoring | Not GPS |
Start with the high-reliability rows. Harsh events sound impressive in a demo but need the right device and careful thresholds; a bad threshold produces hundreds of events a day and everyone stops reading them.
The metrics that actually change outcomes
Overspeed events per 100 km
Count, not total minutes. Set the limit by vehicle type: 40 km/h for school buses (the legal limit in most states), 60 for heavy trucks on highways, 80 for LCVs, higher for cars. Record the location so a driver can see it was the expressway stretch at Dadri and not a guess. A driver with 20 overspeed events per 100 km is a different conversation from one with 2.
Idle hours per day
A heavy truck idling burns 2 to 3 litres an hour. Idle time is also the easiest habit to change: it costs the driver nothing to switch off at a queue. Separate idle at known locations (plant queue, loading bay) from idle on the road; only the second is the driver's.
Night driving hours
Fatigue accidents cluster between midnight and 5 am. If your routes do not need night running, the night driving report shows who is doing it anyway. If they do, use it to plan driver changes.
Continuous driving hours
More than four hours without a 20-minute stop is the threshold most fleets use. The GPS trip report shows it directly.
Route and geofence violations
Deviations from the planned corridor, stops at unknown places for over 30 minutes, and visits outside the allowed area. This is as much about theft and unauthorised use as about safety.
Building a fair driver score
A score is useful if drivers believe it. Rules that keep it fair:
- Normalise by distance. Events per 100 km, not per month. The driver who runs 8,000 km will always have more raw events than the one who runs 2,000.
- Compare like with like. Rank drivers on the same vehicle class and the same kind of route. A tempo in Delhi traffic and a trailer on the Agra expressway are not comparable.
- Weight what matters. A simple scheme: overspeed 40 percent, harsh events 20 percent, idle 20 percent, night and continuous driving 20 percent. Adjust for your business; a school bus fleet should weight speed much higher.
- Publish the rules. Drivers should know the limits, the weights and how to see their own record.
- Review the top and the bottom. The best drivers are your trainers; the worst five are where accidents come from.
- Reward, not only penalise. A monthly bonus for the top quartile moves behaviour faster than fines, and keeps good drivers from leaving.
How to introduce it without losing drivers
- Tell drivers first. Explain what is recorded, show them the live map and their own trip report. Secret monitoring that surfaces as a fine destroys trust.
- Start with information, not penalties. Share each driver's monthly summary for two months before anything is linked to pay.
- Fix the fleet's own problems. If every driver speeds on one stretch, the schedule is too tight. If idle time is high at the plant, that is the plant, not the driver.
- Check the device before blaming the driver. A tracker in a bad position reports GPS jumps that look like 150 km/h sprints. Filter out speeds above what the vehicle can physically do, and look at the route before acting on a single event.
- Use alerts for the few serious things. Real-time alerts for overspeed above a hard limit, panic button, and movement outside duty hours. Everything else goes in the weekly report.
What a monthly driver report should contain
One row per driver with distance, hours driven, overspeed events per 100 km with the top speed, harsh events per 100 km, idle hours, night hours, continuous-driving violations, and the score. Below it, a map of the overspeed locations for the fleet, which almost always points at two or three stretches.
Driver identification
GPS tracks the vehicle, not the person. If drivers rotate, you need a way to know who was driving:
- Fixed assignment in the platform (driver linked to the vehicle), updated when it changes. Simple and good enough for most fleets.
- RFID or iButton driver ID wired to the tracker; the driver taps in at the start of a shift. Common on buses and in rental fleets.
- Mobile app check-in by the driver.
Without one of these, a driver score is really a vehicle score.
FAQ
Can a GPS tracker detect harsh braking?
Yes, if the device has an accelerometer or reports frequently enough to see the speed drop. Cheap trackers reporting every 30 to 60 seconds miss most events, so use harsh-event counts only with devices that support them.
What speed limit should I set for alerts?
By vehicle type: 40 km/h for school buses, 60 for heavy trucks on highways, 80 for light commercial vehicles. Many fleets set a second, higher "hard" limit that sends a real-time alert while the lower one only counts in the report.
Is driver monitoring legal in India?
Yes. Vehicle tracking is legal and, for many commercial vehicles, mandatory under AIS-140. Tell drivers that the vehicle is tracked and what is recorded; many fleets put it in the employment terms.
How much fuel does driver behaviour affect?
Typically 5 to 10 percent of the fuel bill, mostly from idling and speed. On a truck spending ₹50,000 a month on diesel that is ₹2,500 to ₹5,000 per truck per month.
Does SaralTrack have a driver score?
SaralTrack records overspeed, idle, ignition, geofence and parking events per vehicle and per linked driver, with location and time, and produces the events, trips and daily travel summary reports. Thresholds are set per company or per vehicle. A combined score across those metrics is built from the reports, with the weights your fleet chooses.