In 2016 alone, there were over 36,000 driving-related fatalities in the USA, the highest number in eight years. These increases are attributable to distracted driving, more cars on the road, and an increase of vehicle miles travelLed. TrueMotion, the leading platform for smartphone telematics, today announced a strategic partnership with INRIX, the global leader in connected car services and transportation analytics, to provide contextual driving data to auto insurers to improve driver safety, customer engagement, loss costs, and risk modeling.
Auto insurers working with TrueMotion can now incorporate INRIX traffic, incident and road weather data into their digital programs. The addition of INRIX safety alerts enables insurers to deliver real-time driving notifications to their customers, helping them anticipate dangerous slowdowns, accidents ahead, hazardous road conditions, and other driving risks.
TrueMotion integrates this data into its patented platform and delivers it to auto insurers through an SDK for their self-serve apps or through white label apps. In addition to real-time alerts, insurance carriers can leverage this contextual road data combined with TrueMotion’s driving and distraction data to understand a driver’s true risk profile.
The Rise of Personal Driver Profiles
For example, a person may drive at high speeds, but if they drive at the speed of traffic, they’re less likely to have a high rate of hard braking, a key indicator of risk. Analyzing contextual and distraction driving data together can also help carriers improve model accuracy and better forecast risk.
“Auto insurers can now use driving data to activate a broad array of digital experiences across the customer journey,” said TrueMotion CEO Ted Gramer. “With the addition of INRIX contextual traffic and road safety alert data, our insurance partners can help their customers drive safer with real-time driving alerts, increase customer engagement, and reduce loss costs.”
“INRIX traffic and weather data adds powerful context to the assessment of risk and driver behaviour. Accurate situational context completes the digital view – enabling actuarial, claims, and customer engagement goals to be met in new, quantifiable ways,” said Kevin Foreman, vice president and general manager, enterprise sector at INRIX. “Our partnership with TrueMotion is a perfect example of how movement data can provide a new lens on a long-standing problems and open opportunities for innovation.”
About TrueMotion
TrueMotion offers auto insurers a mobile telematics platform that enables next-generation digital programs. Powered by mobile technology, machine learning, and data science, its patented smartphone data platform can accurately determine when a person is driving and reveal her behaviours behind the wheel, including distracted driving.
This unique data powers usage-based insurance, distracted driving programs, claims services, and fleet management programs. Headquartered in Boston, Mass, with offices in London, Milan, and Budapest, TrueMotion works with 15 carriers around the world including eight of the top 20 insurers in the US.
About INRIX
INRIX is the global leader in connected car services and transportation analytics. Leveraging big data and the cloud, INRIX delivers comprehensive services and solutions to help move people, cities and businesses forward. Our partners are automakers, governments, mobile operators, developers, advertisers, as well as enterprises large and small.
Insurance-Edge.net Comment:
There are several UK telematics specialists and insurers in the UK working along the same lines, as underwriters wake up to the fact that a postcode, or a particular occupation does not load up driver risk by 20% or more. Driving data, in all its minute, analytical detail, is the key to understanding risk, and here’s why:
Where you park each day for work, or shopping – how risky is that area for theft or vandalism?
How often does the driver break speed limits, especially in wet or icy conditions, and does the data reveal regular phases of hard braking or cornering, on the same stretches of road? That can highlight a driver who likes to `beat the traffic’ on roads that they know very well for example.
Does the driver use the vehicle late at night, or exceptionally early in the morning, and is their smartphone reciving/sending texts or Whatsapp messages? That’s a possible indicator of tired driving, which some might say is more risky than breaking the speed limit by 5mph when fully alert.
The big questions for the insurance industry are all about data; how much will policyholders trade, and who gets to share the data beyond the insurer? Will data patterns effectively replace old fashioned questions about jobs, driveway parking, marital status, years of NCD etc when it comes to quoting a price?
AI is still evolving and the most profound changes are perhaps some 10-15 years away, when both politicians, and the insurance industry, decides who has the freedom to get behind the wheel, and actually take full control of the vehicle.
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