PALO ALTO, Calif., June 17, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- June 17, 2019 — NautoⓇ, an AI-technology company that’s improving the safety of commercial fleets today and the autonomous fleets of tomorrow, today released findings from a study of commercial drivers’ distracted driving behavior and found while nearly all drivers (99 percent) had at least one distracted driving event, behavior improved dramatically when Nauto Prevent In-Cab Alerts were activated within their vehicles — not only reducing the frequency of their distraction, but also the duration and distance traveled while distracted.
Daily headlines about road safety, confirm there’s general agreement that distracted driving is a growing problem. In fact, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) about nine people die each day as a result of distracted driving and another 1,000 injuries occur per day in accidents that reportedly involve a distracted driver. We believe this is an underestimation - based on our 2018 study, we found that over 70% of collisions involved distracted driving.
The good news is, Nauto found nearly four out of five drivers in fleets across industries studied saw improvements in distraction frequency, duration and distance traveled after activating Nauto In-Cab Alerts. On average, these drivers reduced their frequency of distractions by 40 percent (4.8 to 2.9 distractions per driving hour), duration by 43 percent (15.4 to 8.8 seconds per hour), and distance traveled while distracted by 47 percent (0.15 to 0.08 miles per driving hour).
Reduction Across Industries
Nearly every driver studied (99.6 percent) triggered at least one distracted driving event during the period of the study. Nauto studied customers across multiple industries: Passenger, Services, Logistics & Transportation, Distribution, and Oil & Gas and found Passenger fleets were the most distracted with over 5 distractions per hour before Nauto In-Cab Alerts were enabled, followed by Services (4.4), and the other industries studied (3.1)1. While Service fleets were the second most distracted to start, they witnessed the greatest overall improvement in distraction frequency after deploying Nauto In-Cab Alerts for distracted driving, reducing distraction frequency by over 65 percent, followed by the other industries studied, 39 percent, and Passenger, 27 percent.
Greatest Reduction in the Most Distracted Drivers
On average, the worst 10 percent of all drivers studied triggered an average of 25.3 distraction events per hour, drove distracted for 85.6 seconds per hour and for nearly 1 mile every hour. Of those, some drivers were distracted for up to 2.5 miles every hour — the aggregate equivalent to driving across Manhattan blindfolded. After enabling Nauto In-Cab Alerts, close to 85 percent of these drivers improved their distracted driving behaviors.
“It's one thing to note and know that distracted driving is a critical issue bordering on an epidemic and it’s another thing to find a tangible solution that so dramatically changes the behavior and improves safety in fleets,” said Jennifer Haroon, COO, Nauto. “This study has shown activating Nauto Prevent In-Cab Alerts can reduce the overall number of distractions, frequency, and duration in which drivers are distracted. Addressing driver distraction today not only increases fleet safety, but has an impact on vehicle losses, personal liability claims and, potentially saves lives and reduces injuries.”
Nauto has detected over 21 million distracted driving events to date across ~250 million miles traveled since 2017. Nauto's AI-powered device is the only solution that can detect distracted driving behaviors in real-time by deploying computer vision and deep learning algorithms on the edge, independent of inertial events or smartphone applications. This allows Nauto data scientists and engineers, and our fleet customers to understand just how prevalent distracted driving behavior is in the world and is not just limited to behavior surrounding mobile phone use.
Additional Resources
- Infographic: Reducing Distracted Driving with Nauto Prevent
- Blog: Introducing Nauto Prevent: Real-time Coaching for High-Risk Moments
- Blog: Nauto Engineering: Deep Learning for Distracted Driving Detection
- Video: Nauto Prevent, In-Cab Alerts in Action
Distracted Driving Study: Driver Behavior Improvement with Nauto Prevent In-Cab Alerts
Nauto data scientists conducted a study on the change in distracted driving behavior before and after enabling Nauto Prevent In-Cab Alerts for distracted driving. The analysis was conducted from a sampling of Nauto customers across multiple industries: Passenger, Services, Distribution, Logistics & Transportation, and Oil & Gas1, and included analysis of 2.1 million distraction events, 696K trips across 13.5M miles, and 1376 drivers. The study looked at drivers’ trips between September 1, 2018, and April 30, 2019, and compared distracted driving behavior from a baseline period preceding the activation of Nauto Prevent In-Cab Alerts against the distracted driving behavior starting two weeks after the activation of Nauto Prevent In-Cab Alerts.
About Nauto
NautoⓇ is an AI-technology company that’s improving the safety of commercial fleets today and the autonomous fleets of tomorrow. Nauto’s intelligent driver safety system assesses how drivers interact with the vehicle and the road ahead to reduce distracted driving and help prevent collisions. With this knowledge, Nauto is powering the development of self-driving technology that brings the best of human driving to autonomy. Nauto is located in North America, Western Europe, and Japan. Nauto is backed by SoftBank Vision FundGroup Corp., Greylock Partners, BMW iVentures, General Motors Ventures, Toyota AI Ventures, Allianz Group, Playground Global and DNX Ventures. More information about Nauto is available at www.nauto.com, or on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.
- For the purposes of statistical significance, Nauto grouped fleets from Logistics & Transportation, Distribution, Oil & Gas into the “Other” category.Nauto, Nauto Coach, and Nauto Prevent are registered trademarks of Nauto, Inc. and its subsidiaries worldwide.
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