“God’s Chauffeur” explains the importance of telematics in driver behavior education
It has been some years in the making but it would work so well for insurance companies, telematics service providers and fleet management companies on a global scale. Along with another consumer sector that desperately needs new safety goals, standards and principles – young drivers.
This new to market driver behaviour offering could become a future game changer … a life saver by default. Its potential safety impact for driver’s using telematics in there various forms (black box, OBD dongle or Smartphone) could be significant, but only if they have something much more important than a simple ‘Drivers Score’ working alongside of it.
We all know that traditional defensive driver training is hugely expensive and not a financially viable solution and I have never been a fan of online driver assessments where drivers can ‘wing’ there way through it. As little else is working or affordable, this opportunity to make drivers safer, encourage them through coaching and mentoring processes and providing a perpetual drip-feed of guidance and actionable education could well be fodder from the insurance heaven. It’s hugely affordable, consistent, scalable and most of all, its interactive and engaging to work with.
An evidence based, viable driver behaviour education solution that fits perfectly in the insurance, TSP, fleet management, young driver and OEM markets globally. One that could provide the holy grail for insurers … lower loss ratio, lower crash causation, frequency and severity whilst having a positive impact on profitability.
This can only happen through coaching, influencing and providing guidance which allows driver behavioural change, but it also allows an insurer to know more about their customers and from a marketing perspective allows more customer ‘touch-point’s.
It is something that will bring an evolving change in the insurance and fleet operator sectors. Something that will modify and modernize the way insurance companies set new considerations for the driving risk covered and something that will develop and impact over a short period of time. Interestingly for fleet users, it provides cover that meets some compliance and litigation issues; for example - audit trails, duty of care, corporate manslaughter and corporate social responsibility.
Telematics provide a plethora of highly useful vehicle and driver information but this new approach brings a new and significant value-added capability on top of this.
What telematics do very well is assess and evaluate driver behavior, safety and driving style perfectly. What’s even better is the fact that the assessment is unbiased and without interference. The data capture and quality analytics tell us what we need to know about specific driving behavior. This is the starting point that fits the new product perfectly and from it, education can be delivered inch perfect.
Telematics capture driver data which is then analyzed and from this combination, drivers are presented with the infamous ’Drivers Score’. This is where the core problem lay and also where the Telematics value chain stops.
Without doubt, a score of driving capability and safety competence can be useful as it rates driver behavior, but it’s of little use if irrelevant or badly worded feedback is then sent out. What is required is a structured education and an inch perfect coaching program to help drivers achieve a higher score and therefore drive safer and gradually change their behaviour through influencing and guidance.
It’s through this critical factor that the usefulness of telematic deployment is flawed as proved by the ‘Hawthorne effect’ which can last a little as a couple of weeks. Without education and coaching, it becomes a dead-end fruitless journey for the driver and the insurer. And one that has taken a significant investment from the insurer, by installing the telematic device, paying for the data, analytics and driver scores – all to no avail as driver improvement grinds to a halt.
Driver education aligned to telematics deployment should bring profitability to the insurer through the fact that over 95% of all road traffic accidents are caused by human error. If education, through coaching and mentoring, can lower the driver error count and therefore lower loss ratio – that equation stacks up significantly.
In effect, the fundamental missing link in the telematics value chain is driver education and coaching. This ensures the ‘Hawthorne effect’ is extended exponentially. It’s essential that the education comes in the form of a perpetual drip feed of engagement through refined ‘evidence based’ content which prioritises coaching principles and mentoring processes. Using this formula is the only way experienced drivers will ‘buy-into’ the process of furthering their own safety and fuel saving improvement through education.
Plus it’s where the real driver safety issue can be exercised, namely the attitudinal and behavioural elements of a driver’s armory. Through 38 years in this industry I can assure you that this is the key safety element behind the wheel. For experienced drivers, safety is NOT a skill-set … it’s a mind-set. The critical human factors of attitudinal and behavioral elements are the real cause of unsafe driving as the mind is the BOSS when driving and skill rarely comes into the safety equation.
Skill has no effect on how we think and feel, or how we act and react to situations we meet on the road. The big issues are emotional stability, mood swings and controlling temper loss – if these factors cannot be controlled then confrontation and retaliation follow – these have nothing to with skill. The Mind is the BOSS as it controls almost everything a driver does; it’s called emotional instability and lack of mental discipline. The mind runs the show and almost forces drivers to do things they sometimes don’t want to, even though they know it’s dangerous.
It is essential that education includes the mental aspects of safer driving as driver training has always been skill based. It’s also important to the success of any coaching and mentoring that are ‘carrot’ and never the ‘stick’. It must incentivise, inspire and empower … through engaging targeted coaching and world class educational content.
By entering this potential world of lower loss ratio, insurers need to change the way they tackle the telematic deployment as through education and coaching, they present a differentiator in a market suffocated by parallel offerings.
The next generation in the telematics delivery value chain is here. Be above the crowd.
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