(Photo credit: Shuets Udono.)
Milliman, Inc. (Seattle), a global consulting and actuarial firm, has released a new driving risk score created with San Francisco-based tech start-up Zendrive that that the firm says is up to six times more powerful than the leading predictive models currently on the market.
Sheri Scott, Principal, Milliman.
Milliman reports that it teamed up with Zendrive, a smartphone-powered driving analytics company, to study how distracted driving and other driving behaviors can lead to auto collisions. Using Zendrive data, Milliman says verified the behaviors that were strong indicators of collision frequency and created a risk score to compare the “worst” drivers relative to the “best.” Their findings revealed that the worst 10 percent of drivers were over 13 times more likely to be involved in a crash than the best 10 percent of drivers. The results were based on what Milliman calls one of the largest, if not the largest telematics data set in the U.S. As of today, Zendrive has captured over 40 billion miles of driving behavior via smartphone sensors, according to Milliman.
Over Six Times More Accurate
“Smartphones can measure driving behaviors that traditional, first-generation telematics can’t, such as who is driving the vehicle and phone usage contributing to distracted driving,” comments Sheri Scott, principal at Milliman and co-author of the study. “These new-age predictors contributed to a risk score that is over six times more accurate than the current industry leader models, which use traditional hardware-based telematics devices. There’s an opportunity here for auto insurers, especially commercial auto fleet insurers, to be early-adopters of this technology, and improve their ability to measure and rate risk.”
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