ITFT Partners with AESA

Innovative Technology For Transportation (ITFT) and the Association of Educational Service Agencies (AESA) are pleased to announce a new partnership with ITFT’s Soteria, the premier safety standard for student transportation.  The partnership will bring cutting-edge safe driving technology to AESA’s 553 educational service agencies nationwide.

Soteria is a cost-effective solution for all automotive vehicles.  Its patented technology will deliver compatibility to every vehicle manufactured after 1996 to either prevent or notify when a driver is speeding, driving recklessly, or using apps on their phone while driving.  Through the partnership with AESA, the unique Soteria safe driving system will be readily available to more than 80% of public school districts and 83% of private schools in the United States.

“Soteria is a natural to help school districts manage school bus safety,” Matthew Godley, CEO of the Huntersville, NC based transportation technology firm said, expressing his commitment to extending Soteria safety to public and private school systems through AESA.

“School bus transportation is the safest ground transportation in the U.S.—but more than 10,000 children are injured each year and we are witnessing increasing vehicular incidents daily in local and national news.  It is a grim reality that traffic accidents in the U.S. have gotten out of control,” Godley said.

“Soteria can reduce the human and material cost of this terrible trend, bringing crash statistics down in a significant way.  Our system is designed for simplicity and ease of management which will immediately register and report speeding, reckless driving and use of cell phones by school bus drivers,” Godley said.

Fleet administrators will receive Soteria notifications in real time as school buses complete their routes.  Early warning of speeding, excessive swerving, hard braking, and rapid acceleration enables school systems to intercept buses noted as moving erratically in any manner, potentially mitigating accidents, saving lives and operational dollars, and reducing accident liability and insurance premiums.

The patented system implementation process is completed in seconds, regardless of the size and types of vehicles within a student transportation fleet.  Soteria is a small plug-in device that is inserted into a vehicle’s onboard diagnostic (OBD-II or J1939) port, located underneath the steering wheel of every vehicle.  The technology integrates with a Controller Area Network (CAN) bus operating system in order to give the vehicle specific commands that are selected and programmed by the school system.

Distracting mobile apps will be eliminated by the Soteria system.  The Soteria device and software will geo-locate where the vehicle is in real time, governing the vehicle accordingly—limiting vehicle speed and sending notifications as to any unsafe behavior or collision.  In case of an accident, Soteria will immediately notify assigned emergency contacts.

Soteria improves more than operational safety—it also contributes to monetary savings from the moment of installation through Soteria’s preventive maintenance and diagnostic alerts, enabling fleet administrators to maintain service needs of vehicles before breakdowns and costly repairs occur.

Research by the U.S. Department of Energy shows that by driving the speed limit and otherwise responsibly, fleets can save between 20-60% on fuel costs each year.

The SAE International Journal of Fuels and Lubricants reports that speeding and jerking on brakes burns 25 to 68% more fuel.  Highly aggressive drivers used twice as much gas as moderate drivers.  Test results also showed that driving 10 mph more than a speed limit burned 11 to 21 % more gas.

“Do the math,” the Journal advised, “and you will find you’ll lose between 25 cents and $1 for every gallon of gas.”  Further, the Journal reported, assuming a driver fills a 15 gallon tank five times a year, far less than the capacity of standard school buses, he or she will burn an extra $750 annually—the math creates a huge savings for bus fleets.

There are eight critical features in technologies to improve the safety and savings of transportation—GPS routing and maintenance; adaptive speeding notifications; hard breaking; rapid acceleration; excessive swerving and accident notifications; speed prevention; and cellular app-locking.

“We will bring to the 553 AESA agencies nationwide a product that delivers all eight of these features that perform in real time.  There are other GPS and maintenance systems on the market, but they provide, at most, just three of the eight offerings,” Godley said.

Godley elaborated that Soteria is the only product on the market that detects every speed limit and reports actual speeding in real time. Soteria is the only patented technology that will connect directly to a vehicle’s diagnostic system to function as an adaptive speed governor to ensure the vehicle is driving the correct speed limit on any road.

The Soteria system is personal to ITFT CEO Godley.  With great emotion, he recalls, “Two kids in my town died tragically in a car accident and I wanted to create a change—I wanted to create something that could have saved their lives.  I hope my technology will save the lives of millions of other people around the world.”

Godley calls Soteria his passion and gives it laser focus.  “Over the last three years, I’ve poured my heart and soul into this safe driving system.  Fundamentally, Soteria is about keeping the people we love safe—it is truly game-changing technology that can greatly benefit school systems—saving lives and creating a safer harbor for precious school funds.”

Godley’s mission is simply to save lives through the prevention of vehicle accidents.  To him, nothing could be more important than to focus on school bus transportation to protect millions of students every day.

Toward that end, Wisconsin’s CESA Purchasing has recently signed with IFTF, adding Soteria as a vendor in its cooperative that provides value added benefits to K-12 schools.  CESA notes that in Wisconsin, more than 515,000 public and private school students are transported by 13,500 school buses each day.  In 2016, there were 610 school bus accidents, which resulted in 175 injuries and approximately $14 million in economic damages.  CESA said, “Soteria is the premier solution to increase the safety of student transportation.”

Jane Wray, Purchasing Administrator for CESA, said, “To make a bus safer and more efficient is one of the most important pieces of information a school can have.   I am excited to bring ITFT to Wisconsin . . . thank you for thinking of all the tomorrows—how to keep our kids safe.  It matters.”

Wray felt so strongly about Soteria that she took to Facebook, saying, “This device is amazing as it saves schools money and time when it comes to running buses and routes efficiently.”

ITFT CEO Godley agreed, saying, “Soteria definitely has added value—when the system is installed it will keep drivers both safe and accountable.  In the age when lawsuits are common, this provides an extra layer of protection for school systems and employees.”

Matthew Godley

Founder and CEO

matthew@itftsolutions.com

Phone – (704) 787-4283

Perry Williams

Director of Business Development

perry@itftsolutions.com

Phone – (304) 380-1983

Soteria is the product of an all-star team that Godley built from the ground up.  He is a graduate of Denison University with a BA in economics.  His natural business instincts have enabled him to bring to Soteria collaborators that have worked in motorsports engineering, product development, and Silicon Valley electronic design firms.  His team members hold degrees from Syracuse University, Stanford University, University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Michigan.