Insurance App Onlia Sense, Developed by Sygic Has Cut Distracted Driving Trips by 11 Percent

Despite improvements in hands-free driving technology, such as voice commands and sleeker integrations for mobile and infotainment systems,recent studies show that drivers still aren’t showing any improvement in distracted driving accidents. In fact, it still kills about 3,000 people a year in the US alone and injures 431,000 more.

Three decades ago the distraction behind the wheel barely existed. When the first mobile phones were introduced to the wide public, we also learned what phone calls and text messages while driving might cause. Today, the scale is much larger, with every one of us receiving on average 46 push notifications a day. Not talking about phone calls or recording a video for a new Instagram story.

While the distraction level behind the wheel has significantly changed, the way how monitor driver behavior not much. The most common are hardware black boxes, which use data from car sensors to create the behavioral analysis of the driver and reflect it in the vehicle insurance contract. Additionally, they are unable to detect if you are using the mobile phone or not or provide real-time feedback and motivate you to change the bad habits.

But modern smartphones are not just limited to send you to push notifications. They contain a variety of high-quality sensors and hardware, including accelerometer, gyroscope, GPS or camera. Combined with Sygic unique driver scoring algorithm, gamification, and positive motivation attitude, it is making a positive impact on how the drivers behave.

Positive motivation makes the difference
In 2018, we have partnered with insurance company Onlia to create an app that serves as a black box, uses the smartphone sensors to measure the behavior behind the wheel and has the ability to detect distracted driving. The app is free to use for everyone in Canada and provides perks and rewards to motivate and engage users.

The app registered over 155,000 undistracted trips, which is 11 percent more than a year ago when Onlia Sense was released. In Europe, telecommunication giant O2 has used our driver scoring algorithm to reward drivers with free mobile data. Since launch in April 2019, it has recorded a decrease in distracted driving events per trip by half (from 0.61 to 0.3 smartphone touches).

Using app-based driver scoring, especially in the insurance segment, can help the companies to identify low-risk drivers, grow engagement, acquire new and reward existing customers and at the same time have an impact on road safety for everyone.

Sygic is showcasing the latest innovations for the insurance companies at TU-Automotive Connected Car Insurance USA 2019 in Chicago from September 4-5. To learn more about driver behavior analysis, grab your free copy of Driver scoring white paper.