This study compares the safety and accessibility effects of Pay-As-You-Drive (PAYD) strategies, simulated using a transportation model. PAYD is an insurance policy for car owners where, to better reflect crash risk, the insurance premium is paid per kilometre actually driven. With more advanced monitoring technologies, the PAYD insurance premium can be further differentiated to reward safe driving behaviour with a lower premium.This more differentiated concept of PAYD is currently being tested in a real life pilot. As part of this pilot a modelling study has been performed in order to assess the possible network (safety) effect of large-scale implementation of PAYD. The setup and results of this modelling study are described in this paper. Seven PAYD strategies have been investigated with different kilometre-based insurance premium differentiations (based on road category, time, and age). The network effects appear to vary greatly depending on the design of the PAYD strategy. The most common effects found in this model study are mode shifts and trip making (elastic demand effect) and route shifts. To improve traffic safety, the best strategy would be to differentiate premium to reflect safety, i.e. higher fees for unsafe road categories and nighttime driving, and apply t to all drivers. This way, drivers optimise towards the lowest cost and highest traffic safety. Total crash reduction is predicted to be more than 5%, resulting in a reduction of 60 fatalities and over a 1000 injured by traffic each year in the Netherlands. (Author/publisher)
Abstract