In 2016 alone, nearly 3,500 people were killed in car crashes resulting from distracted driving. While there are many factors that contribute to distracted driving, we know that cell phone use continues to top the list: in fact, half of drivers recently reported talking on a hand-held phone while driving—and nearly 35 percent have sent a text or email—despite knowing that cell phone use can be a crash risk.
Distracted Driving Awareness Month is a reminder that we all have a responsibility to pay attention to the dangers of distracted driving and help curb the occurrence of collisions, injuries, and deaths that might otherwise have been prevented.
As a company that’s committed to the safety of commercial fleets, we want to help prevent collisions before they happen—and that starts with distracted driving. To help address growing traffic safety issues, we recently partnered with Atlas Financial Holdings, one of the leading commercial automobile insurers, to detect and score distracted driving and improve the risk assessment of commercial fleet drivers. Using data gathered in real-time by Nauto’s intelligent driver safety system, we detected and analyzed the collisions from over 1,450 drivers across 17 commercial fleets over a four month period.
Collisions from the assessment period were categorized based on whether the drivers involved were considered distracted or attentive. The same collisions were then categorized by aggressive and smooth driving based on a driver’s average number of harsh acceleration, braking and cornering (ABC) events during the period. To further assess distracted drivers, their collisions were categorized based on severity, as defined by the Strategic Highway Program (SHRP) 2 NDS Crash Severity Classification Scale. Here’s a snapshot of the findings:
With more distractions happening behind the wheel, what can we do to better identify and collect evidence of this behavior? We’re now working with Atlas to reduce collisions and enhance the safety of fleets. With a real-time understanding of driver behavior, we can not only detect distraction events, but also automatically upload them to a secure web application and score them based on their relative risk factor. This ultimately provides fleet management and safety leaders with the insights they need to identify coachable events and target the highest-risk drivers with evidence-based driver coaching, while recognizing the safest and most attentive drivers. It’s still early days, but we’re already seeing that Nauto-generated knowledge of driving performance leads to better performance behind the wheel.
View the full customer success story here.
Reaching for a phone. Fiddling with the radio or navigation system. Looking down to take a bite of food. None of these activities seem dangerous, but they all take your attention away from safe driving. We all have a responsibility to keep our roads safe. Let’s not only raise awareness of distracted driving during the month of April, but every month, and help put an end to this dangerous behavior. Because when that happens, everyone benefits.
