Focused on the Road and Not Your Phones (Corey Woinarowicz - NoCell)

In this episode, Corey Woinarowicz, the chief revenue officer of NoCell joins the Mile Marker Podcast. NoCell is on a mission to end cell phone distracted driving, an issue that affects everyone, and Corey shares insights into their efforts to address this widespread problem.

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Transcript

Angela Simoes:

You're listening to the Mile Marker Podcast, where we explore trends and innovations in fleet automation and shared mobility, helping fleet-based businesses make better informed decisions and achieve full digital transformation.

Welcome, everyone, to another episode of the Mile Marker Podcast. My name is Angela Simoes. I am here today with Corey Woinarowicz, who is the chief revenue officer for NoCell. NoCell's mission is to end cell phone distracted driving specifically, but I think distracted driving across the board. We've very excited to hear about that because there's no one on the planet that can't argue that it's not a problem. Definitely something that we all need to be concerned about. Joining us from the Ridecell side, we have Mark Thomas, EVP of strategic alliances.

So thank you both for joining us today.

Corey Woinarowicz:

Thanks, Angela. It's good to be here.

Angela Simoes:

All right. So, Corey, tell us a little bit about NoCell and your mission around improving driver safety.

Corey Woinarowicz:

NoCell is an anti-distracted driving technology platform. It consists of a NoCell tag that goes in the vehicle, an app that goes on the phone and a backend portal that allows fleet managers or system admins to authorize whatever apps they deem necessary for the fleet driver to have accessible to them while they're driving or while the vehicle's in motion.

Our mission is very simple. It is getting the drivers, the commercial drivers home every single night. Or at the end of every shift. It's exhausting to hear all of the horrific stories.

Angela Simoes:

Right.

Corey Woinarowicz:

Every single fleet I've talked to has a story about, "This driver was the best driver I've ever had, and driver of the year, and this and this." Looked at their phone at the inter pass and all of a sudden, lives are lost and lives are changed forever because of this ridiculous addition to the cellphones.

Angela Simoes:

Right. A split second can change multiple lives.

Corey Woinarowicz:

100%, yeah. It's all 100% preventable. These are all crashes that are preventable by eliminating the cellphone usage while in the vehicle.

Angela Simoes:

Right. We were talking before we started recording and some of the stats you were sharing, I'm sure you will share here momentarily, demonstrate that the positive results are pretty instant once companies implement your technology.

I'm curious, how are the drivers reacting to the use of NoCell? Again, given this addiction that we have to our phones.

Corey Woinarowicz:

That's a great question and I love that question because I was already ... When we first started doing this four years ago, when I joined the company, the drivers were the unknown factor. They were the scariest part of this whole thing. We all thought that drivers were going to quit, and they were going to leave the company, and they were going to revolt against us. Now, I meet with drivers and drivers' groups every single week.

In fact, we recently developed a NoCell driver advisory board, where we're talking directly to drivers about this technology. We have one gentleman, Daniel Clark, that the first time I met him ... This guy, he's been driving a truck for, I don't know, 16 years or something like that. He has four million safe miles. The very first time that I met him he's like, "No way. You are not doing this to my cellphone, you are not putting it in the cab. I do not want it." 15 minutes later, after answering some questions for him, he was like, "I can't understand why this isn't in every single truck, every single commercial vehicle across the United States."

Angela Simoes:

Wow, that's quite a 180, if you will.

Corey Woinarowicz:

Yeah. 100%. What we found out is nearly every driver that we talk to and all the different platforms that we get on, it's more of just they need to be educated. They need to understand that we don't track anything, or the company that owns the data, doesn't track anything once you're outside the vehicle. The only thing that we want to do is make sure that the cellphone and an app on the cellphone is not a distraction while you're driving. Whether it's an HVAC, F250 full loaded, or a big rig, or whatever you're driving, that the phone is not a distraction and you get to get to your next stop or next mission.

Mark Thomas:

What are the typical allowable apps?

Corey Woinarowicz:

That's a great question. It's really determined by the phone policy or the safety policy of the company. If you're on a pharmaceutical fleet, they're most likely going to have a map. Maybe Google Maps, or Apple Maps, or Waze, or something to that nature. And maybe, guys want Spotify. If you're in a big rig, it's probably a nav app, a weather app, and maybe their ELD or their camera, their Samsara app or something to that nature.

We're trying to make sure that that driver, he's on the road and they all of a sudden want to make a TikTok video, or they want to watch the latest whatever bingeable Netflix series there is, or something like that. We're trying to make sure that it's the fine line between productivity and safety.

Mark Thomas:

Do you detect whether the vehicle is running or not? Or stopped or not? And then, re-enable those permissions?

Corey Woinarowicz:

Yes. There's an accelerometer in all cellphones. It's part of the intelligence of the NoCell tag as well. The fleet admin would set it up in the portal, an activation speed, anywhere from one mile an hour to 10 miles an hour. As soon as the vehicle gets up to speed, that activation speed that they choose, that's when the phone goes into policy and the unauthorized apps are removed from the phone. After the trip is complete, they can either stay in the cab and wait for that delay time to be exhausted, because there's a delay time as well. It's anywhere from five seconds to three minutes. They can wait in the cab and let that delay time exhaust, and the phone returns to full functionality. Or, they can get out of the cab or out of the vehicle with the phone, and the phone returns to full functionality then.

Mark Thomas:

So when you said removed from the phone, you're not actually deleting the apps are you?

Corey Woinarowicz:

No. It's not a delete or an uninstall. What it is, is it removes it from the face of the phone so the driver cannot get to those apps while the vehicle's in motion.

Mark Thomas:

What does that tag do?

Corey Woinarowicz:

The tag, well a couple of things. The tag identifies the vehicle. The phone and the app identify the driver, the tag identifies the vehicle. Because we have several customers that are using this almost as a time clock. Their first trip, as soon as the driver gets going, they know that they're on their first trip for the day or first part of the route. The other thing is the tag will also identify, make sure that the phone is in policy. And also, will help detect if there's any loss of service, or if the driver is not driving for some reason, so there's an inactivity alert that goes along with it as well.

We can also detect if the driver picks up the phone. So if there's a phone handling alert, we drop a pin on the map so you can see exactly where the driver was when they picked up their phone, handled their phone. You can go back and look at the reports later on. If the driver's in a crash at Fifth and Main, and you can see that they were picking up the phone at that point in time, then the company's in a more defensible position. They know exactly what they're going to do. If there was a c crash at Fifth and Main, and there was no phone handling alert, then you know that the phone was in policy but the driver was not handling that phone at the time.

Mark Thomas:

How do you know if they don't have a second phone?

Corey Woinarowicz:

Ah, Mark, that's great. You're making my day. We can detect any multiple devices, any rogue devices in the vehicle as well. The driver has the phone that has the NoCell app on it. It's pristine, they know they're not supposed to touch it, they don't mess with it at all. But they picked up a burner phone because they wanted to watch the MLB playoffs that night on the way home, or something like that. Or whatever, Netflix or something. We can detect that there's another device in the vehicle and report that to the fleet admin as well.

Mark Thomas:

Wow.

Angela Simoes:

Yeah. To my previous question, you found that drivers are actually responding quite positively to this. So let's put that in context, in terms of what some of the results have been. Have you gotten any pushback at all, in any way? Whether it be from the drivers, or from let's say your IT or fleet management teams.

Corey Woinarowicz:

There's initial pushback from drivers until we bring them together and answer questions. The question is what app do you actually need to do your job? Do you need TikTok, do you need Netflix, do you need Facebook Messenger to do your job while you're driving? It boils down to no they don't. They need maps, and they might need a company app that maybe tells them that it's a low bridge ahead, or weather alert, or something to that nature, whatever. This actually gives the company the ability to enforce their cellphone and safety policy. Because before, people would sign that page on the first day and say, "I pinky-promise I will not use my cellphone in a company car while driving." Well now, you can enforce that policy and prove that you're enforcing that policy.

Angela Simoes:

Right.

Corey Woinarowicz:

Some of the results that you asked about. Stevens Trucking out of Oklahoma City is one of our first customers and they've been with us over three years. They've had zero insurance claim dollars because of distracted driving since they installed the platform.

Angela Simoes:

Wow. I don't know if you could give their numbers before, but is that a-

Corey Woinarowicz:

It's a significant-

Angela Simoes:

72% decrease or something like that? Yeah.

Corey Woinarowicz:

I can tell you that it was significant. Usually, we don't discuss that. But I know it was well above zero. And, their phone handling went down 80%, over 80% after 10 days of having the product in their vehicles.

Angela Simoes:

Just 10 days?

Corey Woinarowicz:

Yeah.

Angela Simoes:

[inaudible 00:10:50].

Corey Woinarowicz:

Once a driver picks up the phone, they can't get to those apps. They can't get to TikTok or whatever. They stopped picking up the phone. Then it's just another device in the vehicle. They train themselves, it's sort of Pavlovian training as you will.

Angela Simoes:

Right, right. Some of the things that we have discovered in conversations with companies that have fleets, as well as a survey that Ridecell did with ABI Research, is the need to ties systems together. You mentioned that on the driver's phone, there may be a Samsara app and some other fleet management apps. To what extent does NoCell integrate with some of those other apps? Or maybe, it's even at a very basic level, with CarPlay. So again, just making sure that the phone doesn't get into the driver's hand, but it's integrated into the vehicle system.

Corey Woinarowicz:

Any app that you can put on a phone can be used with NoCell. The secret sauce comes in the backend portal, where the fleet manager would authorize such apps. If a fleet manager wants you to have a Samsara app, and whatever apps they want, they can authorize those and you will still have those active, just like any normal app. The NoCell platform is a fully contained, self-contained platform. The tag has a battery in it that lasts right around three-and-a-half years. It's just like a toll transponder battery. It plays well with every other piece of technology in the vehicle.

We have not, as of yet ... We're in certain different stages with a few different manufacturers, camera manufacturers and TMS manufacturers, to integrate fully with them. But we have not crossed that bridge entirely yet. Except for one other small company out of Miami, called Prometheus. They're a refrigerated tracker and camera company out of Miami.

Mark Thomas:

What does in-cabin camera integration look like? What are the use cases for that?

Corey Woinarowicz:

That's another great question, Mark. It's great. If there is an event ... Say on the camera side, they detect an event where either it was a hard swerve or something like that, it will pull up the data from NoCell and it would say if they were handling the phone, what they were doing. On the NoCell side, if there is a phone handling event, and we know that the person picked up the phone, it'll actually trigger the camera and go back a certain amount of seconds. So if the driver says, "I wasn't handling my phone." Well now, we have the NoCell alert and we have video proof that you picked up your phone at, whatever the coordinates are. It really works well together.

Angela Simoes:

Is there any sort of alert if they do pick up their phone it says, "Put your phone down," or something like that? Or does it beep to remind them, "Hey, you're not supposed to be handling your phone at this point?"

Corey Woinarowicz:

We are true believers that anything like that for us would be a distraction.

Angela Simoes:

Okay.

Corey Woinarowicz:

What we're trying to do is just take away the apps so that it takes away the main distraction of the phone in the vehicle. And then, all of the alerts that we very go into the portal and the reporting mechanism that we have for the fleet administrator or the fleet manager.

The first iteration, there was a light on it and it blinked whenever you did certain things. But we have, as a company, decided that we want to eliminate the distractions so we're not going to add any coaching or anything like that. When we do integrate with camera manufacturer, they have the AI to do the coaching. We just really want the phone, which is involved in 87% of all rear end collisions are because of the cellphone. We figured if we eliminate people picking up that phone, or hearing a buzz, beep, ding or ring, that eliminates the majority of the distracted driving crashes right there.

Angela Simoes:

Are you finding or are you surprised maybe at some of the companies that are coming to you, asking about the technology? Or are there companies that you feel that should be paying attention that aren't? I'm asking this because I'm thinking of Uber drivers. Uber is a fleet. I don't know to the extent that Uber can put an app like this on the driver's phone. But I can tell you, just this past summer, I was in an Uber, and the driver was on his phone, and we got into a fender bender. Luckily, it was quite minor and it was not a big deal. But still, I have to say I think every Uber driver I've ever had is always having a personal conversation, is always doing something else on their phone while I'm a passenger. Just curious if you've had any car sharing or other types of fleets that have sought out this type of solution?

Corey Woinarowicz:

We have talked to Uber. We've talked to Uber, Uber Freight, a lot of the different ride share companies. We have discussed putting our app, the APIs of our app, into their app, into the Uber app, so that they would not have the ability to be changing music, or doing 100 different things that they shouldn't be doing while they're driving very valuable passengers in the back.

I actually was in Atlanta earlier this year, and my Uber driver was so distracted that I had to ask the Uber driver to stop and I got out.

Angela Simoes:

Got out?

Corey Woinarowicz:

Because I'm like, "I cannot die in a distracted driving crash and not say anything. I have got to speak up." Yeah. I see that.

There's several companies that we are talking to. One of the biggest frustrations that we have is it's not going to break the bank. The drivers are validating that they think that it's a good technology to keep them safe. We have companies that just drag their feet right now and it is the biggest frustration that we have.

Angela Simoes:

Well, I think this is a solution that's for all sizes of fleets. Whether you have five cars or 500 cars, distracted driving is distracted driving. It's going to be the same issue.

You mentioned AI when we talked a bit about integrating with cameras.

Corey Woinarowicz:

Right.

Angela Simoes:

I feel like you can't have a discussion at all about any type of technology these days without mentioning AI. What are you seeing in terms of AI future integrations, how AI can help this process, that kind of thing? Have you explored that?

Corey Woinarowicz:

For our product specifically, there's a couple of different areas that we can use that technology in. Specifically on the trucking side, or on team driving in a vehicle. We'll be able to eventually tell you, by the signal strength and the algorithm of the Bluetooth signal, we'll be able to tell you who's in the passenger seat, who's in the driver's seat, and who's in the backseat. And then, you'll be able to set up permissions for the different positions in the vehicle or in the truck.

I love technology, I think it's fabulous. Technology got us into this mess. These things-

Angela Simoes:

Right.

Corey Woinarowicz:

Back in 2005 or whatever, all everyone had a flip phone or had a Crackberry or whatever, and we didn't have to worry about this. Because if they were texting, they could feel the actual buttons and do it. But I think it's going to take technology to get us out of this mess as well.

I hear the worst stories every single day from companies, about the phone just being such an issue. People are addicted to the phone. The dopamine that is released by the brain whenever they hear a buzz, beep, ding or ring just makes you do stupid things.

Angela Simoes:

Right.

Mark Thomas:

Do you have any sort of plans then for direct to consumer, since this is also necessary?

Corey Woinarowicz:

Mark, this is great. We are working with three very prominent insurance carriers because we're simply not large enough to bring it to five million parents, mom and dads of teen drivers, or whatever. We are going to work through the insurance carriers, and they will bring it probably under their own name, their own label, to their insurers. Most likely, it'll be targeting new drivers up to the age of 21. But it could be one of those where they give a discount, based on having this on your phone and you have less than X amount of phone handling, or X amount of alerts on your phone.

Angela Simoes:

Right. Usage based insurance, and at the end of month, if you complied and you didn't have any "violations," then you get either a reward, or like you said, a discount. That's becoming pretty prominent, I think, when it comes to usage based insurance applications for sure.

Corey Woinarowicz:

Absolutely.

Mark Thomas:

[inaudible 00:20:51] for teenagers.

Corey Woinarowicz:

The insurance companies will save, no matter what. If you have an insured that's not on their phone, the likeliness of them not getting into a crash, it goes up exponentially.

Angela Simoes:

Right.

Corey Woinarowicz:

We are working with an insurance carrier, a captive insurance group. They flat out told us, they looked at every dollar they paid out in claims as a group over the last nine years, and then the data scientist there put a technology for every sector of type of crash that they had. Had they had the NoCell technology for their members over the last nine years, they would have saved $39 million. It's real dollars. It's captive, so they're all paying into the pool.

What else could you do with $39 million? So many more things other than paying out claims and paying for preventable crashes.

Angela Simoes:

That's just a dollar amount. I don't know if they added up the number of lives that actually may have been saved too, which is an even more impressive number I'm sure.

Corey Woinarowicz:

Right. It's not just the lives of the driver that has a NoCell on it, it's the minivan that they don't hit.

Angela Simoes:

Right.

Corey Woinarowicz:

It's the college students that are going home from a game that doesn't get hit, or whatever.

Angela Simoes:

Right.

Corey Woinarowicz:

There's a big ring of consequences with every single preventable distracted driving crash.

Mark Thomas:

We talked about the tag, what goes on the mobile device. You haven't really mentioned much about the portal. Are you pushing realtime alerts to the fleet management or does this get reconciled at the end of the day? How is the current monitoring happening?

Corey Woinarowicz:

They're near realtime alerts. The phone gets pinged every five minutes. If there's a phone handling alert or any of the other alerts that we put out there, that would go to the portal right off the bat. The fleet admin would be able to see that.

It used to be at the end of every trip, everything would be put up to the cloud and you would see the entire start, stop, and all of the alerts in between. But now, it's more realtime. At the most, it's five minutes. I know a zillion things can happen in five minutes. But without pinging the phone every four nanoseconds and draining the battery 100% in 10 minutes, it's a pretty good reporting mechanism.

Mark Thomas:

Does your solution's backend have any API?

Corey Woinarowicz:

Yeah.

Mark Thomas:

Would Ridecell be able to listen and subscribe, and then kickoff potentially some automations based upon some of the alerts and conditions that your solution is generating?

Corey Woinarowicz:

Yeah. We have open API strings that we can work with you on. You can pull the data hooks that you think are most prominent to your customer base. It's also SDK.

We're very open and flexible to working with just about anyone that wants to use the data in their portal. There's no ego involved other than we know every time we install a platform for a company, we potentially saved the lives of those drivers and the drivers that don't get hit. We've got a great development team that would be working with you and walk you right through, "This is what we have to offer, this is how you can pull it," the whole works.

Mark Thomas:

That means your fob, like the toll tag thing, has to have its own telematics connection?

Corey Woinarowicz:

No.

Mark Thomas:

So it's using the mobile phone's connectivity to send the push notifications?

Corey Woinarowicz:

Right.

Mark Thomas:

Okay.

Corey Woinarowicz:

Yeah. It's not a dead tag, but all it does is it creates a communication link between the phone and the tag to make sure that we're detecting the things that we normally do detect.

Angela Simoes:

One last question I had, Corey. We've talked about the impact as far as lives saved. But from a fleet productivity standpoint, have you noticed or have there been any measures of well, now that drivers aren't so distracted, they're actually completing their rounds more quickly, or they're able to deliver one or two additional deliveries per day, or other things that measure productivity. I'm just curious if there's been any measure there, because that's always the big thing. How productive is our fleet being, and now that they're not distracted, how does that result?

Corey Woinarowicz:

That is an amazing question. I do not have that yet, but that is something that I would love to dig into. We get year-over-year losses, or non-productive vehicles, or non-productive hours because of preventable crashes. That is data that we will be publishing a little bit further, probably first quarter or so. We don't have that the driver is more productive because of it this day, but we will have that the vehicles are more productive because they were not in the shop for 16 weeks, or whatever. You don't have to rent a replacement car. You don't have to do all those other ancillary costs that are associated with that crash, that preventable crash.

Angela Simoes:

Yeah, those are excellent points as well. Getting the most out of the vehicle asset, for sure.

Corey Woinarowicz:

Right. Especially right now, where replacement vehicles are so hard to come up with. All the way from the sedans, all the way up to the Volvo rigs, or the Peterbilts, or whatever. You need to have the vehicles that you have right now, you need those to be productive right now. You cannot have a lapse in judgement by a driver that leads to a rear end collision, and all of a sudden it's average cost is $92,000 in six weeks. It's a big, fat number. All of a sudden, you'd have to have that person that's on the road in that vehicle, do 140% of their job so that you could break even. It's a big numbers game, big calculate.

Angela Simoes:

That's a good point. Well, we have come to the end of our episode. Mark, any final questions?

Mark Thomas:

This has been great. I want it for my kids, so hurry up and get the insurance companies onboard.

Corey Woinarowicz:

Yeah. I'm working on that every single day. We say we get up early every day to make sure your drivers get home every night. Well, we're preaching the gospel according to NoCell to everyone that'll listen. We're not always the bearer of great news, but we are doing whatever we have to do to get these installed, and keep the drivers safe and the general public safe.

Mark Thomas:

I feel like our two companies are related. You're NoCell, we're Ridecell.

Corey Woinarowicz:

I know.

Mark Thomas:

All in the family.

Corey Woinarowicz:

Yeah, exactly.

Angela Simoes:

Well, the stats that you were talking about, they're just incredible so no one can argue with that. Congratulations on an excellent mission and executing on your mission. We wish you the best of luck and thank you so much for your time today.

Corey Woinarowicz:

Yeah. Thank you so much for allowing us to get the word out there another way. Appreciate it.

Angela Simoes:

Absolutely.

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