Dive Brief:

• At a May 29 city meeting, Toronto's Government Management Committee voted to scrap a proposal that would place cameras in the cabs of the city's garbage truck fleet, as reported by InsideToronto.com. 
• The intention of the proposal was to increase internal surveillance in order to improve safety management and determine causes of accidents when they happen. However most city officials predicted this proposal would have a negative effect on morale.
• Beaches-East York Councillor Janet Davis said at the meeting, "This is about invasion of personal privacy and the extent that management can do that," InsideToronto.com reported. Some other committee members said the suggestion to monitor garbage truck drivers on their routes should be part of a bigger discussion about management.

Dive Insight:

In-cab cameras have become a fairly popular resource across the U.S. waste and recycling industry for safety and training purposes. Last year, Waste Pro installed AWTI's 3rd Eye System across the company's entire fleet to increase driver visibility, give fleet managers real-time monitoring of truck routes and increase communication between managers and the drivers. Additionally, Action Environmental Group had installed in-cab cameras across 20% of its fleet as of last summer, referring to the technology as a "game changer."   

Advanced Disposal has also installed DriveCam cameras across the company's entire fleet and despite driver skepticism, CEO Richard Burke has acknowledged that employers can gain trust by using the cameras for the right purposes. 

"At first they're uptight about it. I mean it's a little Big Brother — I wouldn't like it either — but it's really the culture and how you use it. If you use it to play 'gotcha,' then you play right into what we don't want ... Your words are one thing but it's really the actions and how you interact with your front line employees and use the data," Burke said in a recent interview. 

However, getting drivers on board with the technology is not always easy. In March, sanitation workers in St. Petersburg, FL opposed a proposal to install Lytx cameras across the city's fleet, citing concerns about surveillance and job security. During the city's pilot program with the cameras, 454 "coachable" incidents — such as drivers not wearing seatbelts or distracted driving — were recorded, which likely fueled the workers' concerns. As Burke mentioned, reviewing recordings with drivers in a constructive way is crucial to using these cameras for the proper safety purposes.