Denver’s smart fleet: How one city is driving the future with telematics

Denver is taking the lead in modernizing its municipal operations, proving that a "smart city" isn't just about futuristic concepts. It's about applying intelligent technology to everyday services like trash collection, street sweeping, and utility work. The City and County of Denver is harnessing the power of smart devices to transform raw vehicle data into actionable intelligence, resulting in a city fleet that is more efficient, sustainable, and safer for everyone.

What does Denver’s commitment to telematics look like? It’s a thorough and deliberate approach.

Goals

The underlying purpose is clear: to improve operational efficiency, significantly lower the carbon footprint, optimize how vehicles are allocated, and ensure a higher standard of preventative maintenance.

Extensive coverage

This isn't a small trial. Telematics systems are deployed on over 1,500 traditional vehicles, such as cars and trucks, and about 1,000 specialized vehicles, such as snowplows and forklifts.

Platform providers

The city relies on industry-leading vendors, like Geotab and Samsara, for robust data collection and management tools.

Data collection

The system captures a full 360-degree view of vehicle operation, including forward-facing (external) and driver-facing (internal) video, GPS location and speed, deep engine diagnostics, fuel consumption metrics, and critical driver actions such as harsh braking and prolonged idling.

Tangible benefits for Denver

Beyond the technology, these systems are having a significant impact on Denver’s bottom line and its public services. The strategic investment in a smart fleet is yielding significant returns for the city and its residents.

Real cost savings

By gaining granular, real-time insights into vehicle diagnostics, engine performance, and fuel consumption patterns, the city is able to shift from reactive repairs to predictive maintenance. This proactive approach significantly reduces unexpected breakdowns, minimizes vehicle downtime, and substantially lowers both routine operating expenses and emergency repair costs. The efficiency gains directly bolster the city's financial health.

Positive environmental impact

The optimization of vehicle routes, which minimizes idling and unnecessary travel, combined with ensuring vehicles run at peak efficiency, directly translates into a measurable reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and fuel usage. This tangible progress moves the city much closer to achieving its ambitious environmental sustainability targets and improves local air quality for all residents.

Data-driven decisions

A powerful and enduring benefit is the ability of fleet managers to transition from guesswork to precise decision-making. They now possess hard, verifiable data on vehicle utilization, performance, and lifecycle costs. This essential information allows for optimal resource allocation, precise, intelligent maintenance scheduling, and the strategic planning of future purchasing decisions to ensure the fleet is modernized with the most efficient and suitable vehicles.

Safety first: The power of AI dash cams

While efficiency and cost savings are great, the area where Denver's telematics program truly shines is in its remarkable success with safety. The City and County of Denver didn’t just feel safer; they have the stats to prove it. Their telematics and AI dash camera program is leading to major, quantifiable improvements in safety and a reduction in incident severity. These results are truly transformative for a municipal fleet.

According to official reports, the city has seen major, quantifiable improvements in key safety metrics since implementing the system:

• Harsh driving incidents (e.g., hard braking, rapid acceleration): 99% decrease
• Distracted driving events: 98% decrease
• Overall safety incidents (fleet-wide): 94% reduction
• Severity of accidents (moderate, major, extensive): 60% decrease
• False safety-related claims filed against the city: 50% reduction

These numbers showcase Denver's telematics program achievements, detailing decreases in harsh and distracted driving and overall safety incidents. City officials attribute these impressive results to the use of AI-powered dash cameras and software. This technology doesn't just record; it provides real-time feedback and coaching tools directly to drivers, which has led to an impressive overall average safety score of 95 for the municipal fleet's drivers.

Getting smarter: A template for every city

Denver's success story is a blueprint, illustrating a future where city services are seamlessly optimized through connectivity. Telematics is quickly becoming a foundational technology for modern municipalities everywhere. It's how local governments manage costs, boost safety, and enhance public services by injecting data-driven insights into their vehicle fleets.

Cost savings: Protecting the taxpayer’s dollar

Municipalities can significantly reduce operating expenses. This is achieved through route optimization to minimize mileage and travel time, which in turn lowers fuel consumption and associated emissions. Furthermore, proactive maintenance scheduling based on real-time engine diagnostics helps prevent costly, unexpected breakdowns and extends the useful lifespan of expensive public vehicles.

Improved safety: Creating safer roads and drivers

Driver behavior monitoring—tracking speeding, harsh braking, and rapid acceleration—allows fleet managers to identify risky habits and implement targeted training programs, leading to fewer accidents. In the unfortunate event of an incident, telematics data and video footage from dashcams provide crucial, unbiased evidence for insurance claims and litigation defense.

Enhanced efficiency and productivity: Getting the job done faster

Real-time GPS tracking is a game-changer for service delivery. It enables dispatchers to identify and send the nearest appropriate vehicle to a service call or emergency, dramatically improving response times. This data also helps optimize asset allocation by revealing underutilized equipment, preventing unnecessary new purchases that waste public funds.

Accountability and transparency: Building public trust

Telematics provides an unbiased, verifiable record of vehicle activity and service completion. This data can be used to quickly and effectively address citizen complaints, prove that essential services like snow removal or waste collection were completed, and build public trust through transparent reporting.

Regulatory compliance: Easing the administrative burden

The technology automates the tracking and reporting of data points required for compliance with various regulations, such as driver working hours, emissions levels, and maintenance intervals, significantly reducing the administrative burden of manual paperwork.

Theft prevention: Protecting public assets

Real-time location tracking and geofencing (virtual boundaries) help prevent unauthorized use of municipal vehicles and can aid law enforcement in quickly recovering stolen assets, saving the city the high cost of replacement.

Ready to follow Denver's lead? Your telematics playbook

If your municipality is ready to follow in Denver's footsteps, where do you start? A structured approach is key to ensure a smooth transition:

Start with a pilot program

Don't try to flip a switch on the entire fleet all at once. Instead, test the system with a small, representative group of vehicles and users first. This initial phase is crucial, as it allows the city to proactively identify and resolve any technical, logistical, or operational issues that may arise before committing to a resource-intensive full-scale deployment. By starting small, cities can ensure a smoother and more successful eventual rollout across the entire fleet.

Plan installation carefully

Coordinate closely with installers and field technicians to ensure all devices are installed both correctly and efficiently across the entire fleet of vehicles. A commitment to quality installation practices is absolutely vital for ensuring accurate and reliable data collection from the smart city assets.

Choose the right vendor

This is a long-term partnership. Select an experienced, dependable vendor that offers robust customer support, ongoing training resources for your team, and technology that can scale with future needs. Look for a vendor with a proven track record in the smart city or fleet management space. The technology should be flexible and future-proof, for example, technology that is already prepared for electric vehicle (EV) integration and can adapt to new connectivity standards.

Manage public perception

Be proactive with communication. Utilize the transparency afforded by telematics by demonstrating to the public how the city is using the technology to improve efficiency, accountability, and the safety of the services they rely on every day. By clearly and consistently communicating these benefits, the city can build public trust and show a commitment to optimizing its fleet operations for the betterment of the community.

The crucial role of cellular IoT connectivity

The success of a telematics program hinges on a reliable, robust, and widespread communication backbone—which is where cellular IoT connectivity becomes essential. Telematics devices in municipal vehicles constantly generate immense volumes of data, including high-definition video, precise GPS coordinates, and real-time engine diagnostics.

Cellular IoT provides the continuous, high-speed wireless link necessary to transmit this data from the vehicle back to the centralized cloud platforms for immediate analysis.

• Ubiquitous coverage: Municipal vehicles operate across every corner of the city, often in areas where Wi-Fi is unavailable or impractical. Cellular networks (4G LTE and 5G) offer the most extensive coverage area, ensuring data is captured and transmitted regardless of the vehicle's location—from downtown streets to remote worksites.
• Real-time data transmission: The safety benefits, such as instant alerts for harsh braking or distracted driving, require real-time transmission. Cellular networks ensure the latency is low enough for live coaching, rapid incident response, and immediate status updates for dispatchers.
• Scalability and reliability: As the city scales its fleet and adopts more data-intensive applications (like sophisticated AI video analysis), cellular IoT infrastructure is built to handle the increasing volume and speed requirements reliably, without relying on limited public Wi-Fi hotspots or complex local infrastructure deployments.
• Security: Dedicated IoT cellular plans and protocols offer a secure connection, isolating sensitive fleet data from public networks, which is crucial for protecting the integrity of government operational data and ensuring regulatory compliance.