Modernizing vehicle inspections

A paper form made digital — and drivers treated it that way

As lead product designer for safety and innovation at Amazon Last Mile, I inherited the daily vehicle inspection — a federally mandated check (DVIR) that every DSP driver completed before and after each route. The experience was a paper form made digital: a long checklist that drivers blasted through in under 30 seconds.

Compliance rates looked fine. Trust was the problem. Fleet managers couldn’t verify whether a driver actually walked around the vehicle or just tapped through from the driver’s seat. A checked box only means something if someone actually looked.

Adding photographic evidence for fleet managers

I integrated photo capture directly into the checklist: flag a defect, camera opens with specific instructions, photo attaches to the issue and ships to the fleet manager. First time they could actually see what the driver saw.

But photos only got taken when something was wrong. A clean inspection still looked identical to a skipped one.

A hardware solution enters the picture

About a year and a half into my time on the team, Amazon invested in Automated Vehicle Inspection (AVI) tunnels — camera-equipped arches installed at delivery stations that scanned vehicles as they drove through. This was an entirely separate initiative from the checklist work, but it addressed the same core problem: how do you verify the condition of a vehicle without relying on a driver’s word?

My role was designing the driver experience around the tunnel — what happens in the app before, during, and after the scan. Drivers would sometimes jump into their manual inspection before the automated scan had finished processing, then hit a dead end. I designed a gating flow that kept the two halves in sync, and a results screen that merged automated and manual findings into a single report.

Putting AI-powered inspections in every driver’s hand

The tunnel worked — but at enormous cost, and only at stations that had one. Most didn’t. The real question: could we deliver the same quality of inspection through a phone, using AI, at a fraction of the price?

The concept: a guided camera walk-around that replaces both the checklist and the tunnel. The app directs drivers around the vehicle section by section with on-screen guides showing exactly how to frame each shot. AI validates each photo in real time. No infrastructure. No checkboxes. The future of the tunnel, in every driver’s pocket.

Helping drivers understand what to do

Line illustrations alone aren’t enough — especially for drivers who’ve never done a photo-based inspection. The app provides real-time directional prompts (“Move back, down and right”) that update as the driver repositions, paired with visual overlays showing exactly how to frame the vehicle. No guesswork, no training required — the phone tells you when you’re in the right spot.

The result: timestamped, geolocated photographic evidence of every vehicle angle, sent directly to the fleet portal. Consistent photo formats open the door for automated defect detection — turning every driver’s phone into an AI-powered inspection station.