Interpreting the Data
Your Smoke Detected report contains all the information you need to demonstrate that smoking took place in your vehicle. Here is a quick overview of the information in that report:
Timestamp: The start time of the 10-minute detection window.
Duration: The length of the event (always 10 minutes).
Total Smoke: The total concentration of particles detected during the entire 10-minute window (µg/m³). This value is cumulative and influenced by several factors (see below).
Smoke Concentration Graph: A graph showing changes in particle concentration over the 10-minute period. Peaks in the graph represent instances of active smoking.
GPS location: Location data of the event
Driven speed: The calculated speed of the vehicle, when GPS signal is not available no vehicle speed is displayed.
Factors Affecting Total Smoke Scores
The "Total Smoke" value is a key metric, but several factors influence it:
Smoking Method: Burning (cigarettes, cigars, marijuana) generally produces higher total smoke scores than vaporizing (vapes, heated tobacco).
Smoking Habit: Frequency and intensity of puffs significantly impact the total smoke level. Frequent puffs will cause a much higher total smoke score than infrequent puffs.
Ventilation: Open windows or air conditioning reduce particle concentration, leading to lower total smoke scores.
Vehicle Movement: Airflow from driving can affect the concentration of particles within the vehicle.
Typical Total Smoke Score Ranges
(These are indicative ranges and may vary)
Vaping: 1,000 - 50,000 µg/m³
Cigarettes: 50,000 - 500,000 µg/m³
Cigars: Often higher than cigarettes, potentially reaching into the hundreds of thousands of µg/m³.
Hotboxing: Total smoke scores can reach into the million’s µg/m³.
The Zubie Sense for Vehicles Smoke Detection Algorithm
The RideCare algorithm is sophisticated and designed for high accuracy and a low false-positive rate. It considers:
Particle Concentration: The number of particles in the air.
Particle Size: Smoke particles have a distinct size distribution, different from aerosols (like cleaning products) or diesel particulate matter.
Particle Pattern: The algorithm looks for patterns consistent with smoking behaviors.
The algorithm is tuned to minimize false positives, resulting in a very low rate of incorrectly identifying smoking events. This may result in some very small or infrequent smoking events being missed; however, the habitual nature of most smokers will usually lead to an event being recorded during a rental period.
Second Page of Your Smoke Detection Reports
Through our collaboration with Bosch, Zubie Sense smoke detection works by considering the following parameters:
Particle detection
The device can detect the smoke of a cigarette, vaping device or similar products by measuring an increase of particle levels in the vehicle for at least 30 sec.
The device can distinguish between different sizes of particles and therefore identify particles that are typical for smoking.
Comparison of particles detection to background air quality
The device frequently examines the air in the vehicle and establishes the background air quality. This enables us to consider changes in the air quality outside of the vehicle when determining whether smoke has been detected.
The increase of particles must be significant to be considered a smoke event.
Duration of the event
If several smoke events happen in a timeframe of 10 minutes, they are summarized into one event.
Additional considerations
Any person smoking in the vehicle can trigger a smoke event. This is not limited to the driver only.
After detecting a smoke event, Zubie provides smoke event data to the fleet owner, but neither implies any actions towards end-customers nor gives decision-making advice.
The smoke detection device cannot identify the number or identity of people in the vehicle.
Based on the provided smoke event data in connection with timestamp and license plate, the fleet owner can map the information to the respective end-customer or assigned driver.
How to read the event data and the smoke graph?
The blue line shows the number of particles detected throughout the smoke event.
The green line shows the background air quality before, during, and after the smoke event. Background air quality represents the quality of the air measured before the detection of the smoke event.
The background air quality is typically expected to be close to 0.
Smoke Detection Units - µg/m³ (micrograms per cubic meter)
µg/m³ - This is a common unit used to measure air pollutant concentration. Here's a breakdown:
µg = micrograms (one-millionth of a gram)
m³ = cubic meter (a unit of volume)