Towing

Tow-truck drivers, typically not known to be the most considerate and yielding traffic participants, are an easy target to blame for damage. Let’s face it, when the disgruntled customer retrieves his vehicle from the impound yard, the need for revenge can be satisfied by offsetting the steep fine and fee he had to pay by way of pointing out some ‘fresh’ damage or missing items. It’s amazing how well car owners suddenly know their vehicles, inside and out.

To help you avoid this uncomfortable encounter, we have developed a line of Vehicle Inspection Systems, a solution that is largely based on our popular digital camera lane technology. By utilizing high definition vehicle imaging and tagging the image sets to the vehicle’s license plate, the system is able to document the condition of the vehicles to be towed, curbside or as they arrive at your facility.

The idea of documenting the physical condition of a vehicle in order to identify the origin of damage has become an industry hit ever since we invented (U.S. Patent Issue #6630893) and brought this technology to market back in early 2002.
 
 
 

The tubular structure shown above is our minimal rendition of a drive-thru lane set-up, which uses LPR (license plate recognition) to tag the vehicle passing thru at up to 75mph … well, 25mph or less if you are looking for sharp and not blurry images to go along with your plate. The software governing this process has a user interface that allows you (yes, you) to adjust the frame/second capture rate, to please your desire to end up with a few, many or lots of images per vehicle from every angle.

Below is another one of our many camera lane configurations. It’s a typical garage exit lay-out, most suited for a covered facility with a lane reader option to force the driver to identify him or herself before the gate will vend. The information collected by the reader will be tagged to the images that are being collected in an almost instant rapid fire fashion.
 
 
 
If you are looking to capture the vehicle condition curbside before loading, our damagepix product will allow you to close the loop using the latest in smart mobile technology, such as the iphone/pod/pad solution.

 

Record the license plate or VIN# and start taking any number of pictures to record existing vehicle damage or its current condition, inside and out if you so desire.
 
 
The images are imprinted with the date, time, geo-tag info, unique transaction code and tow-truck driver name to create an official document that will serve as irrefutable evidence when needed. The program flow is very intuitive and highly visual, leaving nothing to interpret or decipher. The app is available at the itunes store for ease of deployment.
 
 
This visually rich image presentation is the user interface tool provided to demonstrate the ‘oopps – looks like it was already there’ concept to the customer. The round thumbnail portholes represent the 8-camera views, although 4-6 is more standard in the industry. Selecting one puts it on the big screen, so you can start hunting for that little door-ding the customer insists already existed at time of rental. The capture tool enables you to create a snap-shot of the damage so you can save it, e-mail it or turn it into a follow-up post-card for the customer.