Lytx is a

San Diego, California San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the eighth most populous city in the United States ...

based technology company that designs, manufactures and sells video telematics products used by commercial and public-sector fleets to help improve driver safety and business productivity. Products include risk detection, fleet tracking, and driver safety programs that use

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...

and analysts to identify risky driving behaviors and report real-time fleet information. The company's clients include waste management and sanitation companies, trucking and distribution, government and municipality vehicles, passenger transit, construction, utilities, telecom and field services. Lytx also provides compliance services for trucking fleets regulated by the U.S. Department of Transportation.

History

Founding

Lytx, formerly DriveCam, Inc., was founded in 1998 by Gary Rayner. Rayner wanted a version of a "

black box recorder Black Box Recorder were an English indie rock band. They debuted in 1998 with '' England Made Me'' and followed this up with '' The Facts of Life'', which gave them their first hit with the single of the same name in April 2000. Their third a ...

" that could identify the root cause of vehicle crashes, which could then provide clues about how to avoid such accidents in the future. Rayner developed a driver recording system that could gather data from incident and driving recordings to provide insight into driver behavior and other factors influencing crashes. In 1999, DriveCam received a grant from the

Transportation Research Board The Transportation Research Board (TRB) is a division of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, formerly the National Research Council of the United States, which serves as an independent adviser to the President of the Unite ...

(Administered by the

National Academies of Sciences National may refer to: Common uses * Nation or country ** Nationality – a ''national'' is a person who is subject to a nation, regardless of whether the person has full rights as a citizen Places in the United States * National, Maryland, ce ...

) to test the viability and utility of information captured by the DriveCam Video Event Data Recorder (VEDR). Also in 1999, Gary Rayner met Tom Lafleur at an engineering conference, and Lafleur became co-founder and the lead investor for an angel investment group that made the initial outside investment in DriveCam. Lafleur joined the company as chief technology officer and ultimately served as a board member where he remained until the company's acquisition in 2016.

2000–2016

In early 2000, Ed Andrew joined as President while Gary Rayner managed the hardware and software product development teams. Rayner remained with the company as CEO and Chairman of the board until April 2003. By November 2002, the company received three patents for technology related to its DriveCam video event data recorder. In 2005, DriveCam was included on Inc. Magazine's list of the 500 fastest-growing, privately held companies in the U.S. and remained on this list for three consecutive years. In 2006, the company was listed as one of the top 200 contenders for the

Red Herring A red herring is a figurative expression referring to a logical fallacy in which a clue or piece of information is or is intended to be misleading, or distracting from the actual question. Red herring may also refer to: Animals * Red herring (fis ...

''100 North America'' list. In 2007, DriveCam partnered with

American Family Insurance American Family Insurance, also abbreviated as AmFam, is an American private mutual company that focuses on property, casualty, and auto insurance, and also offers commercial insurance, life, health, and homeowners coverage as well as investmen ...

to provide a video feedback program in which parents could review the driving actions of their teens. In 2010, the ''Teen Safe Driver Program'' was awarded the 2010 Teen Driving Safety Leadership Award by the

National Safety Council The National Safety Council (NSC) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, public service organization promoting health and safety in the United States. Headquartered in Itasca, Illinois, NSC is a member organization, founded in 1913 and granted a congressi ...

. Scientists at the University of Iowa used the program to produce a 70% reduction in risky driving behavior. As of 2017, the company no longer offers the DriveCam for Families program. In September 2008, Brandon Nixon became the company's CEO. Also in 2008, the company introduced ''RiskPredict'', a pattern-recognition software that could be used to help predict the riskiest drivers within a fleet. Through a process of scoring, prioritizing and tracking the results of individual driver behaviors, the model identifies those behaviors that would most likely lead to a collision. In 2009, the company launched ''DriveCam Online'', a driver management portal. In 2010, DriveCam added new clients including

Sysco Sysco Corporation (short for Systems and Services Company) is an American multinational corporation involved in marketing and distributing food products, smallwares, kitchen equipment and tabletop items to restaurants, healthcare and education ...

Masco Masco Corporation is an American manufacturer of products for the home improvement and new home construction markets. Comprising more than 20 companies, the Masco conglomerate operates nearly 60 manufacturing facilities in the United States and ...

and the Washington Metropolitan Transit Authority. The company also extended its contracts with

AmeriGas AmeriGas Partners, L.P. is the largest retail propane distributor in the United States based on the volume of propane gallons distributed annually. It serves over 1.7 million residential, commercial, industrial, agricultural, wholesale and motor ...

and

Waste Connections Waste Connections is a North American integrated waste services company that provides waste collection, transfer, disposal and recycling services, primarily of solid waste. It has operations in both the United States and Canada. Its headquart ...

. Later in 2010, DriveCam was listed as No. 30 on the Wall Street Journal's List of Top 50 Venture-Backed Companies. Also in 2010, DriveCam released

fuel management A fuel is any material that can be made to react with other substances so that it releases energy as thermal energy or to be used for work. The concept was originally applied solely to those materials capable of releasing chemical energy but ...

and real-time

fleet tracking A vehicle tracking system combines the use of automatic vehicle location in individual vehicles with software that collects these fleet data for a comprehensive picture of vehicle locations. Modern vehicle tracking systems commonly use GPS or ...

services. In April 2011, DriveCam was awarded a Blanket Purchase Agreement by the

General Services Administration The General Services Administration (GSA) is an independent agency of the United States government established in 1949 to help manage and support the basic functioning of federal agencies. GSA supplies products and communications for U.S. gover ...

for the purchase of in-vehicle video recorders and driver feedback systems. In August 2011, DriveCam became an awarded National Joint Purchasing Alliance vendor. Also in 2011, ONEOK, Public Service Electric and Gas Co. (PSE&G)
Waste Industries
Linde an
Pat Salmon & Sons
joined as new clients. DriveCam also expanded its operations internationally with contracts in Canada and South Africa. In December 2011, DriveCam announced its acquisition of Rair Technologies, LLC, a provider of compliance services for commercial trucking fleets. Upon completion of the acquisition, Rair maintained its headquarters in Brookfield, WI. In February 2013, DriveCam added

Greyhound Lines Greyhound Lines, Inc. (commonly known as simply Greyhound) operates the largest intercity bus service in North America, including Greyhound Mexico. It also operates charter bus services, Amtrak Thruway services, commuter bus services, and pac ...

as a client. And on November 4, 2013, the company changed its corporate name from DriveCam Inc. to Lytx Inc. In 2014, Lytx added Con-way Freight as a client. The same year,

Sentry Insurance Sentry Insurance is a mutual insurance company specializing in business insurance. The company’s home office is in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, where about half the company’s approximately 4,500 employees are located. Sentry offers property and ...

and ARI Insurance announced they would provide their insured commercial clients with subsidies to defray the cost of adopting the DriveCam event recorder. Also in 2014, The Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI) conducted a study of heavy truck and bus collisions. They found that Lytx's video-based driver safety program has the potential to reduce fatalities, collisions and injuries. In 2015, Lytx launched its ActiveVision service at the

American Trucking Associations The American Trucking Associations (ATA), founded in 1933, is the largest national trade association for the trucking industry. ATA represents more than 37,000 members covering every type of motor carrier in the United States through a federation ...

' annual Management Conference and Exhibition in Philadelphia. The service uses machine vision technology to identify patterns that may be indicative of distracted and drowsy driving such as lane departures and following distances.

2017–present

In 2017, the company launched Lytx Video Services, adding access to near livestream video and continuous recording up to 100 hours. The company also added

Walmart Walmart Inc. (; formerly Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.) is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets (also called supercenters), discount department stores, and grocery stores from the United States, headquarter ...

and U. S. Xpress as clients along with UK based tour coach company The Travellers Choice. At the start of 2018, the company announced it had products in more than 3,000 commercial and government fleets with more than 850,000 drivers. Also in 2018, Nationwide partnered with the company to add the DriveCam safety program to Nationwide's long-haul trucking fleets.

Frost & Sullivan Frost & Sullivan is an American business consulting firm. It offers market research and analysis, growth strategy consulting, and corporate training. It has about 45 offices in the Americas, Africa, Asia and Europe; the principal office is in San ...

reported Lytx's market share at more than 60% of the video telematics market. Later that year,

Mack Trucks Mack Trucks, Inc., is an American truck manufacturing company and a former manufacturer of buses and trolley buses. Founded in 1900 as the Mack Brothers Company, it manufactured its first truck in 1905 and adopted its present name in 1922. Mack ...

announced an offer of a pre-wire option of DriveCam and Video Services in all Granite Class 8 vehicles. In February 2019, the company introduced a configurable product portfolio based on the Lytx Video Platform, with the Lytx DriveCam® Event Recorder as the foundational product. At this time, product names including Lytx Video Services and ActiveVision were retired and new program and service names were introduced: Risk Detection Service, Driver Safety Program and Fleet Tracking Service. The brand DriveCam was only used to refer to the hardware. Also in 2019, Lytx joined the

Qualcomm Qualcomm () is an American multinational corporation headquartered in San Diego, California, and incorporated in Delaware. It creates semiconductors, software, and services related to wireless technology. It owns patents critical to the 5G, 4 ...

Smart Cities Accelerator Program. The Accelerator Program plans to use the dataset compiled from more than 100 billion miles of driving data and over 1 million drivers to help smart cities improve traffic and transit flows. Also in 2019, the company added Hogan Transportation, The Caillier Group, and The Trucking Alliance as clients. In December 2019 the company changed the name of its compliance offering from RAIR Compliance Services to Lytx Compliance Services. Lytx was also awarded Company of the Year for Video Safety Solutions by industry analyst firm Frost & Sullivan. In February 2020, Lytx announced an expansion of its machine vision system and artificial intelligence technology. The new technology allows the Lytx DriveCam® Event Recorder to record inside-facing movement triggers along with road-facing movements. The event recorder will provide near real-time insight into potentially risky behaviors such as distracted driving, texting while driving, failure to stop at intersections, weaving between lanes, and following other vehicles at unsafe distances. In March 2021,

Fast Company ''Fast Company'' is a monthly American business magazine published in print and online that focuses on technology, business, and design. It publishes six print issues per year. History ''Fast Company'' was launched in November 1995 by Alan Web ...

announced their top ten most innovative companies in

data science Data science is an interdisciplinary field that uses scientific methods, processes, algorithms and systems to extract or extrapolate knowledge and insights from noisy, structured and unstructured data, and apply knowledge from data across a br ...

and included Lytx as #9 citing Lytx's updated platform, new AI and

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence. Machine ...

technologies that identified phone use 133% more often, and 120 billion miles of driving data as reasons for the award.

Funding history

In November 2011, Lytx received an $85-million investment from

Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe (WCAS), also referred to as Welsh Carson, is a private equity firm. WCAS was formed in 1979 and focuses on investing in two growth industries, technology and healthcare, primarily in the United States. WCAS has a ...

to fund expansion and the acquisition o
RAIR Technologies
The acquisition provided web-based safety and regulatory compliance solutions for DOT-regulated fleets. The acquisition also added patents to Lytx's existing patent portfolio. In February 2013,

Volvo Group Venture Capital The Volvo Group ( sv, Volvokoncernen; legally Aktiebolaget Volvo, shortened to AB Volvo, stylized as VOLVO) is a Swedish multinational manufacturing corporation headquartered in Gothenburg. While its core activity is the production, distributi ...

invested in Lytx and became a minority shareholder. On February 18, 2016, GCTR, a Chicago-based private equity firm, announced it had agreed to purchase Lytx for $500 million in an all cash transaction that closed the first quarter of 2016. Prior investors in the company included

Insight Venture Partners Insight Partners (previously Insight Venture Partners) is an American venture capital and private equity firm based in New York City. The firm invests in growth-stage technology, software and Internet businesses. History Insight Partners was fo ...

, Integral Capital Partners, JMI Equity,

Menlo Ventures Menlo Ventures is a venture capital firm based in Menlo Park, California with an additional office in San Francisco, California. The firm was founded as one of the earliest venture capital firms in Silicon Valley in 1976 and provides technology ...

, Triangle Peak Partners,

and Griffen LLC. In April 2018, Clearlake Capital Group announced it had invested an undisclosed amount in Lytx. Other investors in 2018 included HarbourVest Partners, Public Sector Pension Investment Board and Guggenheim Investments. In January 2020, Lytx announced a majority investment from

Permira Permira is a global investment firm. Founded in 1985, the firm advises funds with assets under management of €60+ billion. The Permira funds have made approximately 300 private equity investments in four key sectors: Technology, Consumer, Ser ...

making this the largest investment in video telematics to date. The investment puts the value of Lytx at over $2.5 billion.

Product

Lytx provides the following products: *Lytx Video Platform - In 2019, the company introduced Lytx Video Platform as its foundational product offering. It is available as a standalone product, with the Lytx DriveCam® Event Recorder, and is required to enable other products such as the Risk Detection Service, Fleet Tracking Service and the Driver Safety Program. The platform provides streaming access of up to 100 hours of continually recorded video. The Video Platform lets users plug additional cameras into the system, allowing for multiple views from the same vehicle, such as side and rear-facing views, along with a road-facing camera. It also allows managers to livestream video from the road. Users can access video from a few minutes to weeks in the past. *Lytx DriveCam® Event Recorder - A dash cam that powers the Lytx Video Platform by collecting and processing data and video. It uses two wide angle lenses to capture events in front of and behind a vehicle, covering a 360-degree view. The dash cam captures events generated by the recorder's

g-force The gravitational force equivalent, or, more commonly, g-force, is a measurement of the type of force per unit mass – typically acceleration – that causes a perception of weight, with a g-force of 1 g (not gram in mass measure ...

sensors while also providing

real-time Real-time or real time describes various operations in computing or other processes that must guarantee response times within a specified time (deadline), usually a relatively short time. A real-time process is generally one that happens in defined ...

in-cab feedback to the driver. DriveCam uses machine vision and artificial intelligence with a video event recorder to identify and categorize moments on the road. It also includes a microphone and light and audio alerts. In 2020, Lytx upgraded the event recorder technology to monitor risky driving behavior by capturing inside-facing triggers. The dash cam now identifies potential distractions and risk factors such as cell phone use, seatbelt use, weaving between lanes, and failure to stop at intersections. *Driver Safety Program - Uses machine vision, artificial intelligence and professional review to identify and report risky driving behaviors to help clients coach their employees to change their behavior to minimize risky driving behaviors. In 2020, Lytx updated the machine vision and artificial intelligence technology to include four new triggers: handheld device, seatbelt use, food and beverages, and driver smoking. *Risk Detection Service - The service uses data pulled from video

telematics Telematics is an interdisciplinary field encompassing telecommunications, vehicular technologies ( road transport, road safety, etc.), electrical engineering (sensors, instrumentation, wireless communications, etc.), and computer science (multimedi ...

and dash cams to identify and alert managers to risky driving events in real time. Risks are predicted using a combination of

machine vision Machine vision (MV) is the technology and methods used to provide imaging-based automatic inspection and analysis for such applications as automatic inspection, process control, and robot guidance, usually in industry. Machine vision refers to m ...

(MV), which recognizes objects and human behavior in images, and

(AI), which uses voice recognition, collision detection and risky driver behavior detection to anticipate events. *Fleet Tracking Service - The DriveCam

Event Recorder A train event recorder – also called On-Train Monitoring Recorder (OTMR), On-Train Data Recorder (OTDR), Event Recorder System (ERS), Event Recorder Unit (ERU), or simply Event Recorder (ER) – is a device that records data about the operatio ...

has integrated GPS-based fleet tracking software that can provide real-time locations of drivers. The recorder also provides fuel and maintenance insights by measuring vehicle idling and speeding. *Lytx Compliance Services - The web-based tool allows carriers to track, document and manage driver logs required by the Department of Transportation and the Electronic Logging Device (ELD) mandates as required by the

Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) is an agency in the United States Department of Transportation that regulates the trucking industry in the United States. The primary mission of the FMCSA is to reduce crashes, injuries and f ...

. The service includes alerts and reports along with audits of driver qualification files.

Patents

The company holds 93 patents for its video event recorder, automatic driver risk assessment, driver detection and warnings, and performance tracking technology. Lytx has an additional 64 registered trademarks and 54 pending patents as of March 19, 2018. Patents relate to operations in

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

, the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...

, the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...

and the

Philippines The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no), * bik, Republika kan Filipinas * ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas * cbk, República de Filipinas * hil, Republ ...

. In 2011, Lytx, then DriveCam, Inc., filed a lawsuit against

SmartDrive Systems SmartDrive Systems, Inc. is a driver safety and transportation intelligence company located in San Diego, California. The company uses video and driver data to monitor driver behavior in commercial vehicles including trucks, buses and trains. Hi ...

citing patent infringement. The two companies resolved their patent disputes in 2012.

References

External links

* {{Official website, http://www.lytx.com/ Driver's education Companies based in San Diego Privately held companies based in California American companies established in 1998