Safety Event Overview

To keep drivers, the goods and passengers they are transporting, and other vehicles on the road safe, Samsara's Vehicle Gateways (VGs) and cameras will document Safety Events in your Safety Inbox, Safety Report, and Alerts page. You can use this information to coach drivers on improving unsafe driving behaviors and get data on what factors may have caused a Harsh Event. 

What is a Safety Event?

Safety Events can include: 

• Harsh braking
• Harsh accelerations
• Harsh turns
• Crashes 

When a Safety Event occurs, the VG records the time, driver, vehicle, and location of the event as well as additional data about speed and direction.

The event can then be found in three different places: 

• Safety Inbox 
• Safety Report 
• Alerts Page 

How Safety Events Are Identified

Safety Events are triggered when the VG's built-in accelerometer detects that your vehicle has surpassed a G-force threshold. These are the default sensitivity parameters and sustained acceleration rates for each type of vehicle: 

• Heavy Duty: 0.35g (most sensitive)
• Light Duty: 0.4g
• Passenger Car: 0.6g (least sensitive)

Manually Set Vehicle Type for Safety Event Detection

By default, the vehicle type is inferred by the VG, but you can also manually set this from the vehicle settings in the dashboard by following these steps:

1. Settings > Gateways > Click three dots next to your VG's name
2. Settings in the drop-down menu 
3. Scroll down to Harsh Event Detection Settings 
4. Select the vehicle type 
5. Click Save

Customizing Safety Event Sensitivity 

You can navigate to Settings > Safety > Harsh Events to configure the Harsh Event Sensitivity of your fleet. 

Harsh Event Sensitivity is set by vehicle type and event type. As you adjust the sliders, you can see the raw values of the thresholds update for each vehicle type.

You can also see Advanced Options by turning the Toggle On (it will turn green). Here you will be able to specify parameters for each type of vehicle and each type of Harsh Event. 

Additionally, if you check Legacy Setting, the settings will default to the parameters above: 

• Heavy Duty: 0.35g
• Light Duty: 0.4g
• Passenger: 0.6g