GPS Vehicle Tracking Now with What3Words

Road XS has been offering GPS vehicle tracking for a number of years.  Our technology has continued to evolve along with device technology in the background.  To increase safety, communication and location accuracy, we have now also fully integrated with What3Words.

Who Are What3Words?

What3Words and GPS vehicle tracking are a perfect combination.  They humanise the world map.  Wherever you are in the world, your position can be attributed to a longitude and latitude.  For example, do you know where 51.5034° N, 0.1276° W is?  Well if you have ever been there, then you will be meeting the UK Prime Minister as that’s the location of 10 Downing Street.

Technology and maps use longitude and latitude to establish pinpoint locations.  So if you were talking to one of your friends over the phone and you were to meet them today at 10 Downing Street you could inform them to get their map out or phone and to meet you at 51.5034° N, 0.1276° W.

It’s much easier though to say meet me at:

slurs.this.shark

That’s the same place in the What3Words world.  If you click this link you can see that that is indeed 10 Downing Street.  What What3Words have done is divide the world into a grid of 3 metre by 3 metre squares and assigned each one of these a unique 3-word address.

You might be thinking what is the point of this?  Well when it comes to GPS vehicle tracking, it could be the difference between life and death.

Patient Transport Support

Road XS is one of the easiest and adaptable patient transport software available.  The user-friendly interface makes creating and allocating jobs not only easy but efficient.  This saves time right when you need to.

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10 Must Have Patient Transport Software Features

We have been working with NHS service providers to transform their mobile emergency patient transport services.  One of the first conversations we held with them was related to improving patient and driver safety and security.  In an emergency, knowing where a vehicle is on a job could be the difference between life and death.  Saving a few minutes by getting the vehicle to the exact emergency location can quite literally be the difference between life and death.

With What3Words, the crews can now see from the journey overview board the last known locations of the ambulance and the location of the patient.  It’s much easier to communicate the location eaten.gifts.tribal than 51.8717° N, 2.2418° W over the radio.  It also improves safety.  If the worst case scenario were to happen, emergency teams can be dispatched to the last known location with great accuracy and speed.

With Road XS, hospitals are able to book patient jobs via our booking service which links in real time to the ambulance crews ambulance dispatch and allocation.  Whilst on the job the live location of the ambulance can be seen so that both crews and hospitals know where the vehicle is.

The introduction of What3Words hasn’t just made it easier to communicate locations, it’s also helped streamline the dispatch operations by knowing when a job is still active or completed and how long remains.

The other benefit for integrating What3Words is in pinpointing drop off locations.  Very often it’s easy to say drop me off at Gloucester Royal, but it’s a large site.  With What3Words and Road XS location pinpointing, you are able to position the exact drop off point.  This is helpful for entry and mobility requirements and means time is not lost entering the wrong area of a hospital.

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Precise Delivery Software

Given the nature of towns and villages, you often find that rural locations are hard to pin down.  This is another use of where What3Words enhances our community delivery service.  Using the Road XS location pin pointer, you can now communicate the exact location for a drop off, even if you can’t see it on Google Maps (for example, new housing estates).

This also becomes most useful when postcodes are unrelated to the area they relate to.  You often find postcode areas to be wide and varied and sometimes a postcode code can be as large as 5 by 5 miles.  Not very helpful if all you have been given is a postcode address.  Sometimes if your location is right out the way, vehicles may drive straight past and end up going around in circles trying to find you.  If you know your What3Words location, you can simply give this as your location and be quickly found.

Community Transport

You can use Road XS GPS vehicle tracking for your community transport services too.  In enabling GPS tracking you can see where your drivers and vehicles are on the map.  This increases safety and awareness of your services in the live environment.

For example, lets say you receive a phone call from a client asking where their driver is.  You can look up the journey ID and see on the map where the driver is currently, their status and their last known location.  This all helps communicate transparently what’s happening in real-time.

If an accident were to happen or another form of emergency, you can very quickly pinpoint the last known location which provides comfort and security for all involved in your services.

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Benefits of GPS Vehicle Tracking and What3Words

As you can see, there are untold benefits of this integration, some are still being realised.  Some highlighted benefits include:

  • Increased safety and security for passengers and crew
  • Direct routing
  • Pinpoint accuracy
  • Improved communication
  • Memorable locations
  • Greater location accuracy
  • Precise deliveries
  • Reduced human error

With Road XS, you get GPS vehicle tracking and What3Words all connected in a seamless and enjoyable experience.  Technology shouldn’t make your life more difficult but should enable you to do more with less.  That’s the real value of Road XS.  Not only does it look pretty, it’s incredibly powerful at making your job efficient whether you work from home or in remote spread out locations across various offices.  You can communicate directly to the operators on the ground and know where your vehicles and drivers are always.

To find out more about what Road XS can do for you whether you are a community transport provider, commercial operator or work within patient transport then feel free to contact us.

This article was updated:

Jun 16, 2020 | Featured, Technologies