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An Amazon delivery truck in Jacksonville, Florida is loaded
Photo: Will Dickey / imago images / ZUMA Wire
Amazon is apparently planning to install high-tech video cameras in its delivery vehicles in the United States in order to better monitor drivers during parcel delivery.
This is what the online magazines "The Information" and "The Verge" report.
The hardware and software will be supplied by the Californian tech company Netradyne.
The company has developed a platform called Driveri that uses cameras and artificial intelligence to analyze a driver while operating a vehicle.
The camera then provides real-time feedback - including information such as “distracted driving” and “please slow down” - and collects analyzes that can be used to evaluate the drivers' shifts later.
This comes from a video that Amazon uploaded a week ago in a protected area on Vimeo.
In it, Amazon manager Karolina Haraldsdottir talks about how the new technology could reduce collisions between vehicles and how drivers could be held more accountable for errors.
The marketing video shows the cameras recording the entire driving time (but without sound) and then forwarding the footage to a special security team for review if an incident occurs on the road.
The driver can deactivate the camera manually, but only when the ignition is switched off.
“We are always looking for innovative ways to ensure driver safety.
That's why we teamed up with Netradyne, ”says Haraldsdottir.
Drivers see themselves threatened
But according to “The Information”, some drivers see themselves threatened by the new technology.
They fear that the technology could increase the pressure on drivers to meet certain delivery times.
Amazon has often relied on US Post and UPS for delivery in the past.
However, the company is increasingly using its own growing logistics network of airplanes, trucks and delivery vehicles to save costs.
Amazon also operates a fleet of tens of thousands of delivery drivers who are employed by sub-companies but still drive Amazon vehicles.
Their work is tracked to the minute via apps.
For a long time, Amazon & Co. have been trying to optimize the so-called »last mile« - that is, the transport of parcels to the mailbox by driver.
Because it is the most complicated part of the logistics chain, this is where the decision is made as to whether the cargo becomes a business.
"This is where 50 percent of the costs arise," Kai-Oliver Schocke from the Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences once told SPIEGEL.
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