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“We keep finding our way back”: why one national fleet trusts Fleet Focus in every cab
Roads are getting busier and the compliance burden heavier. For the team keeping a nationwide HGV operation safe and legal, the camera system in the cab isn’t a nice-to-have… it’s the evidence, the coverage, and increasingly the driver’s co-pilot.
Featuring Jack Watmore, Transport Compliance Manager
– Expect Distribution Ltd
Ask any fleet compliance manager what keeps them up at night and the roads will be near the top of the list. Traffic is denser, junctions are tighter, and the margin for error keeps shrinking, while the burden of proof, should anything happen, falls squarely on the operator. Good camera coverage has quietly moved from a box-ticking exercise to one of the most important tools a fleet has.
Jack Watmore manages compliance for Expect Distribution Ltd, running a nationwide network of HGVs that also takes in the group’s pallet operations. He’s worked with Fleet Focus for several years — long enough to have looked elsewhere, more than once.
“Anybody out there looking for camera systems — we’ve explored other suppliers, other options, and we keep finding our way back here. The reliability, the relationship, and the service we get is way ahead of anything else.”
— Expect Distribution Ltd
Jack Watmore
Transport Compliance Manager
Coverage you can rely on when it matters
For a fleet moving goods across the country every day, the value of a camera system is decided in the moments after an incident, when someone needs the footage, from the right angle, still on the drive. Watmore’s vehicles run a five-camera setup backed by a two-terabyte recording drive.
Are you protecting your driver, or are you monitoring your employee?
And now AI has moved the discussion again
The Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 came fully into force in June 2026, and it eased the old near-ban on decisions made by machine alone. On the surface, that sounds like good news for anyone running AI in the cab. But the driver-facing camera sits in a more awkward spot than that.
The easing largely stops where this technology actually works. Recognising who the driver is can mean processing biometric data. Reading the signs that a driver is falling asleep can mean interpreting information about their physical state. Both sit in the stricter category the law still guards closely. So the rules may have loosened for the machine, while the questions about the person behind the wheel stay exactly where they were.
So is your microsleep alert just a safety warning, or is it something more? And if it is something more, what legal footing are you relying on?
“We’ve got a five camera system with a two terabyte recording hard drive, so there are no issues with space, and it typically records for over 30 days,” Watmore explains. “So we’ve always got time to get that data and that footage back and as importantly it covers all angles of the HGV, and internal.”
That retention window is the unglamorous detail that decides real outcomes. A claim or a query rarely lands the same day; being able to reach back weeks, from any angle, is the difference between defending your driver with evidence and taking someone’s word for it. In an everchanging transport network, Watmore sees that coverage as fundamental to protecting both his drivers, the company and the wider public.
The AI driver facing trial and winning the cab
Camera technology has moved on, and Fleet Focus has moved exponentially with it. Expect Distribution is currently trialling Fleet Focus’s AI driver facing camera, the kind of technology that tends to divide a driver room, because the cab is personal space.
“We’re currently trialling the AI driver facing camera from Fleet Focus, which has proved to be a success,” says Watmore. “It’s always a challenge when you’re dealing with a cab. a personal space but the drivers have taken it really well.”
That acceptance is telling. Driver facing AI succeeds or fails on trust, and trust is built by framing the technology as an aid rather than a spy in the cab. Positioned as support for the person behind the wheel and for everyone sharing the road with them it lands very differently.
The results: better driving, fewer incidents
The point of any of this is the outcome, and after years of working together the pattern is clear to Watmore’s team.
“The job is becoming more and more challenging, and the system genuinely gives drivers aids. We’ve seen improvements in the way people drive and a reduction in incidents on the back of that.”
— Expect Distribution Ltd
Jack Watmore
Transport Compliance Manager
Busier roads, a harder job, and yet safer driving and fewer incidents. That combination. reliable coverage, technology drivers actually accept, and a supplier relationship that has outlasted every alternative Watmore has tested is why Expect Distribution keeps finding its way back to Fleet Focus.
See what the right camera system does for your fleet
From multi-camera HGV coverage to AI driver-facing technology your drivers will actually welcome, Fleet Focus builds systems around how your fleet really operates.
Customer story produced for Fleet Focus. Comments quoted with the customer’s permission. © Fleet Focus.
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