A new in-car system which monitors your driving is claimed to be able to improve road safety, writes Caroline Madden
From tail gating to lane hopping, erratic braking to violent acceleration, most of us hide a nasty little habit that only emerges when we sit behind a steering wheel.
Every so often - usually after going on a driver training day or seeing one of those horrific car crash ads - we resolve to reform our ways and kick the bad habit to the kerb. And we may indeed drive like angels for a day or two, but congestion, stress and road rage quickly chip away at our good intentions and we slip back into our dangerous ways again.
However, there may be hope in sight. GreenRoad Technologies have created a safety system which they claim can break this cycle and help to transform reckless drivers into model motoring citizens. The GreenRoad system uses a number of sensors installed in the car to monitor driver manoeuvres such as braking, accelerating, cornering, swerving and so on. The safety of each manoeuvre is instantly analysed and the driver receives live in-car feedback on their risk status.
So far, so good, but how does it work in practice? I put my driving skills up for scrutiny earlier this month and tested it out.
First impressions? From a driver perspective the system is pretty simple. A small display sits on the dashboard behind the steering wheel and acts as a constant nagging conscience. The display rates the safety of every significant manoeuvre by flashing either green, amber or red, with red obviously indicating a highly dangerous move. In between manoeuvres, the display rates the ongoing safety of your driving since the journey began.
Dublin city centre was't the ideal venue for pushing the system to its limits, as violent swerves and emergency braking probably wouldn't have been appreciated by my fellow evening rush hour drivers.
My driving was nonetheless far from perfect, but the system turned out to be less sensitive and more forgiving than you would imagine and for most of the drive, the display remained an encouraging, ego-stroking green. It took some pretty sharp braking to push the light to amber, and it didn't hit red at all.
Over time, drivers with this system installed in their car begin to anticipate what kind of moves result in an amber or red flash, and hopefully modify their behaviour accordingly. Many of the company's fleet customers run incentive programs to encourage employees to become "green" drivers.
The other aspect of the system is that the data collected is fed back to a central safety centre for further analysis. This means that employers with drivers on the road, motor insurance companies with thousands of customers, or even parents who have handed their keys over to teenage children can monitor the driver's risk levels.
However, the system does not capture whether the driver breaks the relevant speed limit for the particular zone they are in. One of the reasons for this is that many countries, not least Ireland, doesn't have updated information on speed limits for every road.
Instead the GreenRoad system measures "speed handling", says Aidan Rowsome, VP Sales EMEA. Apparently the detection of erratic accelaration and braking, even at low speeds, can be a more accurate predictor of risk than simply monitoring speed alone.
Even the sceptics out there will find GreenRoad's stats hard to argue with. On average, their fleet customers have recorded a 54 per cent drop in the number of accidents, and risky driving behaviour has been slashed in half. Accident costs have plummeted by 65 per cent and fuel consumption has fallen by 7 per cent.
"With one fleet in the UK, just based on their fuel saving they paid for the entire service within one year," says Hod Fleishman, co-founder of GreenRoad.
Younger drivers in particular will be aware that some insurers currently offer premium discounts for installing monitoring systems in the customer's car.
Fleishman explains that these systems use cameras which record a video clip if something erratic happens with the car. But, he argues, you can't build sustainable driver behaviour programmes around videos, because trawling through hours of footage is highly impractical and isn't objective. When it comes to large fleets for the insurance company, either it's automated or it's not going to fly, he says.
"We want this to become the yardstick for safety," Fleishman says. "There isn't a critical measurement for safety - this is the first attempt ever done to quantify safety."
GreenRoad is currently launching its system into the Irish market, so reckless drivers beware - it could soon be time to bid farewell to those nasty habits for good.