The high accident risk associated with young and novice drivers is due both to their inexperience and youth. Inexperience is associated with developing skills that are essential for safe driving such as hazard perception and situational awareness. Youth is associated with risk-taking behaviour and lifestyle choices that increase situations of high-risk exposure such as driving at night and with young passengers. Reducing the risks of young and novice drivers is of prime importance to governments around the world. One possible approach could be through the use of telematics-based insurance. In-vehicle telematics use devices to collect data on vehicle movements and control inputs from which it is possible to gather information about driving styles and behaviours. The many telematics systems available record a range of driving data such as speed and accelerations, exposure (e.g. mileage, time of day and types of road used), collisions, and vehicle location (e.g. to enable stolen vehicles to be tracked). Insurance policies that incorporate telematics devices often offer incentives (e.g. reductions in premiums, additional mileage allowances) and feedback on driving style. When formulating policy in road safety or any other area of public health, it is important to understand the extent to which products may reduce risk factors, and potentially collisions, and the mechanisms underlying these reductions. Telematics-based insurance is assumed to reduce accident rates through reducing the risky driving behaviours mentioned above. This risk reduction is thought to be due to the feedback, incentives and sometimes penalties provided by the insurance companies, but could also include the impact of being monitored. Evidence of the impact of telematics on accident risk in young drivers is therefore currently inconclusive. This is largely due to limitations in existing studies evaluating the effectiveness of telematics. These limitations include insufficient control over innate self-selection bias, lack of control groups and a lack of evaluation of the longer term effects. The current project looks to fill this knowledge gap by understanding the impact of telematics-based insurance on novice drivers. Its overall aim is to understand the effect of telematics-based insurance products on the accident rates of young novice drivers and the consequential impact on road safety. (Author/publisher)
Abstract