It’s well known that South Africa’s roads aren’t the safest in the world. Local insurance company Discovery Insure agrees, and has recently released an app that tracks and measures your driving behaviour. By combining mobile technology and behavioural economics, the app hopes to create better drivers and improve road safety across the country.
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Available for free on Android and iOS, the app uses your smartphone’s accelerometer and GPS to measure your driving behaviour.
The app claims to track harsh braking, cornering, distracted driving and speeding and also gives you personalised driving tips. To add some competitive flare, it has a leaderboard function that will finally help you prove that you’re a better driver than your friends.
The fact that Discovery Insure’s driver app creates real-time profiles of its users means it will have access to a wealth of information which could be used for risk-assessment on a macro scale as well as personally.
Rory Byrne, Special Engineering Adviser to Discovery Insure and F1 Legend, says that apps like this are crucial for making driving more efficient. “In Formula 1 racing, immediate telematics data is crucial to both driver and team to enable real-time driving improvement as the car moves around the track,” he says.
“Research shows that the main cause of car accidents and motor vehicle fatalities is driver behaviour with over 90% of accidents being caused by the driver,” Dicovery Insure CEO Anton Ossip explains.
To help turn the tide of over 13 000 road accident deaths in South Africa each year, Discovery Insure is also launching a Driver Challenge that will run from 1 June 2014 until 31 August. There are weekly draws for a share of R1-million in BP petrol vouchers and a once-in-a-lifetime trip for four to the Monaco Grand Prix.
