"The insurance sector deserves a great deal of credit for developing an insurance product that encourages safer driving and delivers fairer pricing," says Graham Gordon with LexisNexis® Risk Solutions. (Shutterstock)
Today marks the beginning of Road Safety Week 2018, an international effort to raise awareness about defensive driving and road safety.
In conjunction with the event, LexisNexis® Risk Solutions compiled research that indicates young-adult drivers who use some kind of insurance-backed telematics device are dramatically less likely to become involved in traffic accidents.
"Young drivers remain the riskiest drivers on our roads," Graham Gordon, the director of Global Telematics at LexisNexis® Risk Solutions, said in a press release. "The insurance sector deserves a great deal of credit for developing an insurance product that encourages safer driving and delivers fairer pricing."
His team's research determined that the number of drivers in the United Kingdom age 17-19 who have been killed or seriously injured in traffic accidents has fallen by 35% since 2011. This at a time when there are more cars on U.K. roads than ever before: LexisNexis® found that the number of vehicles on the roads increased 10% between 2011 and 2016, and the number of drivers' licenses issued increased by 7%.
|More good news for telematics
Teens may not be the only ones benefiting from telematics insurance. LexisNexis® determined that drivers overall are 16% less likely to be killed on the road when they use telematics insurance.
"The analysis is exciting because it provides evidence that telematics has had a real impact on the safety of young drivers and the potential it therefore offers to improve road safety standards for all motorists," Gordon continued. "It comes at a time when the cost of offering telematics is falling dramatically for the insurance sector."
LexisNexis® researchers deducted that telematics insurance costs as much as 50% less than it did in 2013.
Adoption of telematics insurance, however, seems to creeping along as only four in 52 young drivers are currently using it, according to LexisNexis®. What's more, traffic accident casualties among mature drivers in the U.K. (ages 25-59) has actually inched up by 4%.
"Four out of 5 consumers are comfortable with the idea of telematics insurance," Gordon said. "This all paves the way for more drivers outside of the youngest age group to benefit from new, customer-friendly telematics policies with the promise of fair premiums."
Here are some additional findings compiled by LexisNexis® Risk Solutions in conjunction with Road Safety Week 2018:
- Car accidents are the biggest killer of teenagers, according to the World Health Organization.
- Five hundred people are killed or seriously injured on U.K. roads each week.
- In 2017, 1,793 people were killed on U.K. roads, an average of 5 people every day and just under 25,000 people were seriously injured.
- Seventy-three people a day are either killed or seriously injured on U.K. roads. Last year's annual total was the highest since 2011.9
- Drivers aged 17 to 24 currently make up only 7% of U.K. drivers, but they represent nearly 20% of the people killed or seriously injured in car crashes.
- The 18-25 year old age group make up close to 25% of all auto insurance claims in the U.K.
- The average claim among the U.K.'s youngest drivers is $5,946 (£4625), which is double that for drivers aged 51 to 70.14
- In the U.K., traffic collisions cost the government more than $21 billion (£16.3 billion) each year.
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Elana Ashanti Jefferson
Elana Ashanti Jefferson serves as ALM's PropertyCasualty360 Group Chief Editor. She is a veteran journalist and communications professional. Reach her by sending an e-mail to [email protected].
