SF weighs ‘black boxes’ to track government fleet

San Francisco has a fleet of 7,800 government vehicles, and Supervisor Norman Yee wants the city to know where they are and what they’re doing at any given time.

His legislation to track the location, speed and all-around maneuverings of city-owned vehicles, by installing “black boxes,” will go before the Board of Supervisors for a vote Tuesday. Proponents say the tracking would save the city money, reduce collisions and prompt employees to drive more slowly. The boxes also could provide a glimpse into how and where city employees are spending their time.

Law enforcement departments and unions, however, opposed the proposal on the grounds that the information would jeopardize their employees’ safety. After behind-the-scenes negotiations, Yee amended the ordinance to exempt vehicles used by the Sheriff’s Department, Police Department and juvenile and adult probation departments.

With those exemptions, roughly 75 percent of the city’s vehicles would be required to have tracking systems, up from the 39 percent of city-owned vehicles that have them now, Yee said. The Municipal Transportation Agency, Public Utilities Commission and Department of Public Works use the technology most frequently.

Yee’s ordinance would require city departments to monitor the data in real time — departments usually hire a private company to do that. It also would require the city administrator and department heads to review aggregated data to analyze vehicle expenses, investigate collisions and improve route planning. Individual drivers could be identified based on the cars they were driving.

“It would tell how you’re driving, where you are driving and when you’re driving. It’s in many ways a preventive measure. People would be a little more cautious about how they do things,” Yee said.

Yee pointed to a 2015 study by the city’s budget and legislative analyst’s office that found black boxes in city-owned vehicles have numerous benefits, including “the potential to improve safety, reduce operating costs, reduce vehicle emissions and identify potential waste and fraud.”

The boxes encourage more responsible driving, and supervisors can use the information to clamp down on unsafe practices, the report found, drawing from the examples of other municipalities that use them.

Yolo County, for example, began collecting data from black boxes in city-owned vehicles in 2012 to try and clamp down on sheriff’s deputies driving unnecessarily above 90 miles per hour. After the system was installed, such unwarranted speeding was reduced by 91 percent within a year.

San Francisco pays a lot of money to settle claims from accidents involving city-owned vehicles.

From 2010 to 2015, the city spent $76.9 million on settlements and judgments from claims and litigation relating to its vehicles, according to the budget and legislative analyst’s report. It concluded that using black boxes would help the city save money, because presumably there would be fewer accidents, and because they could help exonerate city drivers who were not at fault.

Mayor Ed Lee’s 2016-17 budget sets aside $1.7 million to purchase and install black boxes.

But law enforcement departments were strongly opposed to the legislation.

“I am not concerned about how our members are driving,” said Martin Halloran, president of the San Francisco Police Officers Association. “I am concerned about non-sworn personnel monitoring where police are all hours of the day, whether they are on duty or off duty.”

Sheriff's Department spokeswoman Eileen Hirst said requiring black boxes on department vehicles could expose deputies to danger. For example, she said, people could ask for black-box data through public records requests to determine what routes the deputies use to transport prisoners to and from jail.

Yee said he hasn’t abandoned the idea of requiring black boxes in law enforcement cars. His ordinance would require the city administrator to file a report with the Board of Supervisors by Nov. 1, 2016, on the feasibility of doing so.

“In the long run it actually saves us money, and hopefully it will save people’s lives,” he said.

Emily Green is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: egreen@sfchronicle.com Twitter: emilytgreen