The UN encourages greater awareness against the risks on the road
This week is the United Nation’s third Global Road Safety Week, during which the UN seeks to encourage greater awareness and action against the risks children face on roads all over the world. You can find more information about the initiative on the official website.
At Octo Telematics we whole-heartedly support the initiative. The UN reports that over 186,000 children die in traffic accidents every year, and reducing that number is a very worthy goal. In the UK Octo has demonstrated its commitment to this issue by partnering with BRAKE, a non-profit organisation which works to raise awareness of road safety and supports those whose lives have been affected by road accidents. We are proud to support their work, and will soon announce some joint activity.
We believe that telematics technology can play a part in improving road safety. Research we recently carried out with YouGov found that 87% of students in the UK said they would be likely to use telematics technology in their cars. Given that young drivers are at most risk of being involved in serious accidents, this is to be welcomed. The same research found that 64% of people believe that using a black box insurance policy significantly improved their driving behaviour.
By helping people to understand how they drive and identify potentially dangerous driving behaviour, we hope to encourage them to drive more safely. Telematics is not just about reducing the cost of insurance policies, the technology can make a significant improvement to road safety by reducing the number and severity of accidents, and making it easier for the emergency services to respond to accidents.
Data from a range of different sources consistently shows that drivers (especially younger drivers) are less likely to be involved in accidents if they have a telematics based insurance policy, with several insurance companies already seeing fewer crashes.
In the UK, Co-operative Insurance says that its data shows young drivers are 20% less likely to have a crash when using telematics, while another insurer, ingenie, said telematics reduce the chances of a young driver having a crash from 1 in 5 to 1 in 8. The cost of claims are also significantly lower, which is a clear sign that the severity of accidents are reduced as well, which means a reduced risk of serious injury.
Roads are inherently dangerous, and it might well be that we never completely eliminate the risks associated with driving, but we believe it’s possible to make a big difference. We can’t stop all accidents, but by working together and developing better technologies, we can make the roads a much safer place for everybody.