Driving a 45-foot-long intercity bus comes with some challenges, especially in busy urban areas. These vehicles have multiple blind spots, which limit the driver’s ability to see pedestrians, bicyclists or other drivers’ risky behaviors. Coach USA, which includes Megabus, wanted to improve safety for its drivers and those around its vehicles.
The company partnered with Samsara, which provides AI-powered dashcams and video cameras to improve safety for fleet operators. For Coach, the results were dramatic: a 92% decrease in preventable accidents.
“Our aha moment with AI-multicam was when we saw what we didn't know was happening out there on the roadway,” Jason Louis, vice president of safety at Coach USA, said on a video. “Pedestrian collision warning gives our operators a extra set of eyes.”
Samsara’s technology uses high-resolution cameras around the bus for a 360-degree view of its surroundings. A pedestrian collision warning system alerts drivers with audible and visual cues when it detects someone entering the vehicle’s path.
Coach bus driver Ethlyn White said the cameras “helps me to stay safe in crowded areas. [I can] pick up on pedestrians that I would have missed.”
Video footage and detected events are automatically uploaded to a Samsara dashboard, providing safety teams immediate access to video, event data and insights for training, according to a news release.
In addition to improved safety for those outside the bus, the dashcams help enforce driver cell phone policies and other safe-driving procedures. Speeding events declined 35% in one year with the technology, and following too closely was cut in half in the same period, according to Samsara.
The technology “makes us safer for not just our driver and the passengers on the bus, but for all of the pedestrians that are outside the bus and people traveling on the street,” Coach USA CEO Derrick Waters said.
Bus travel is considered one of the safest transportation modes in the U.S., according to Bus.com. In 2020, just five intercity bus passengers died in crashes, according to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.
