According to the American Automobile Association more than 38 million Americans were expected to travel by car over Memorial Day weekend.
That is the second-highest Memorial Day travel volume on record and the most since 2005. Thanks to significantly lower gasoline prices — the lowest in more than a decade — about 700,000 more people will travel compared with 2015.
Some of those vehicles on the road belonged to ride-hailing companies such as Uber and Lyft. A question for their riders is how safely the ride-hailing drivers operate their cars when compared to average U.S. drivers.
Until recently, there was little data available to understand ridesharing drivers' risk profiles. Ride-hailing companies generally don't have direct relationships with the carriers that insure the drivers, so they don't provide much data about driver habits. In addition, many drivers don't tell their insurers that they're participating in ride-hailing work; when they do, insurers don't provide telematics devices — like Progressive's Snapshot or State Farm's In-Drive — to track how the drivers operate their vehicles.
A new report from Boston-based research and advisory company Aite Group, "Driving Analytics: Ridesharing Drivers Are Safer Than Average American Drivers," released May 26, provides some insights. Overall, the report says, ride-hailing drivers tend to drive better than average U.S. drivers.
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How the data was gathered
Aite said it interviewed seven major U.S. insurers to learn more about the data points they would ideally need to better understand the risks of ride-hailing drivers. Aite said it then partnered with Zendrive, a San Francisco-based driving analytics provider, to gather data, using sensors in a smartphone, to compare the behaviors of ride-hailing drivers and average U.S. drivers.
Zendrive collected data through integration with other apps, such as ridesharing apps or navigation apps, as well as from drivers directly using its stand-alone app. For the purposes of this report, the analysis was performed on 1 million trips made by approximately 12,000 drivers over 15 million miles, extending from June to August 2015. The data was sampled from across the United States, with a large proportion of trips originating from major metropolitan areas. The data compares the two groups on a per-trip basis, as a ride-hailing driver may drive many more miles than an average driver, which could affect the likelihood of an accident.
|Driving scores
Zendrive's technology tracked drivers' driving behavior using their smartphones' GPS and sensors, and produced a score to allow drivers to track their progress over time. The end result was a safety score for each driver that included a caution score, a focus score and a control score.
- The caution score showed how well the driver followed the rules of the road and avoided creating dangerous or hazardous situations, for example, by excessive speeding and phone use.
- The focus score assessed the driver's attention level based on phone usage and other distracted behavior. It also included hard braking (that is, pouncing on the brake).
- The control Score measured the driver's style of driving and level of aggression. It indicated whether the driver had a tendency to accelerate, swerve, turn or brake aggressively. This also measured aggressive acceleration and hard braking.
The three elements were combined to generate an overall Zendrive score, and the higher the score, the better.
According to the data, ride-hailing drivers are less risky than average U.S. drivers. In the sample trips that were reviewed for the report, ride-hailing drivers received an overall score of 80 while average drivers received a score of 76.
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What do the numbers mean?
In Zendrive's model, any score less than 74 means the driver has habits that could be improved.
Scores from 74 to 80 reflect what the report calls "medium-quality driving habits." An "excellent" driver is one whose score is 81 or better. The report found that the portion of average drivers' trips (42%) associated with driving behaviors needing improvement is bigger than the portion of ride-hailing drivers' trips associated with those behaviors (32%).
In reaching its conclusion that ride-hailing drivers drive more safely than average U.S. drivers, the report observed that ride-hailing drivers have a vested interest in driving well because their riders rate them on safety factors, among other things. Ride-hailing drivers may also be more interested in protecting their vehicles as a direct source of income, not just a means of transportation.
Aite recommends that insurers partner with driving analytics companies to provide better information to underwriters and better segment their customers. Insurers should also reach out to ride-hailing drivers with special education on how to protect themselves and safety tips.
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Rosalie Donlon
Rosalie Donlon is the editor in chief of ALM's insurance and tax publications, including NU Property & Casualty magazine and NU PropertyCasualty360.com. You can contact her at [email protected].
