Despite technological advancements in cars, the rise in traffic, distracted driving, and insurance premiums have made driving more time-consuming, costly, and dangerous, with traffic fatalities rising by 30%1 over the past decade. The willingness of drivers to contribute their data underscores the growing recognition of data’s pivotal role in addressing road safety concerns nationwide.
“Today’s transportation ecosystem is broken and is costing people a lot of money and even lives. But it doesn’t have to be this way,” said Gary Hallgren, President of Arity. “With more driving data available than ever before, Arity is dedicated to identifying the factors contributing to road risk and enabling solutions that empower a smarter, safer, and more useful way to navigate the world. With this latest data report, we’re exploring ways to shape a better future of mobility, revealing how every stakeholder across transportation can contribute to safer roads.”
To gauge current attitudes towards driving safety, tolerance for dangerous driving behaviors, and related concerns, Arity surveyed 1,000 licensed U.S. drivers and performed an in-depth analysis of its anonymized, user-permissioned data aggregated across 40 million U.S. mobile connections, providing detailed insights into driving trends to inform and inspire action.
Key findings from the research report include:
Despite Awareness of Dangers, Risky Driving Behaviors Persist
The survey found 68% of drivers agree that distracted driving, including using your phone behind the wheel, is extremely unsafe. Despite this, the behavior continues. A comparison with Arity’s dataset, comprising over 1 trillion miles of driving data, highlights a concerning reality: distracted driving increased by 30% between 2019 and 2024. Additional insights from Arity illustrate that the COVID-19 pandemic-era drop in trips—by as much as 50% in 2020—did not mitigate risky behaviors. Even as traffic volumes and congestion have returned to pre-pandemic levels by 2023, these hazardous behaviors have persisted, suggesting a lasting change in driving patterns.
Furthermore, the survey revealed less concern for more common, proven accident-causing behaviors like hard braking, speeding, and fast acceleration. Only four in 10 drivers see hard braking (38%) and speeding (42%) as extremely unsafe. Shockingly, 24% of drivers see fast acceleration as a neutral behavior, while 11% see it as safe or extremely safe. These findings highlight a stark contrast between drivers’ recognition of unsafe practices and their actual behavior on the road, pointing to a persistent issue in driving habits that transcends the pandemic.
Awareness Starts – but Doesn’t End – with Better Informed Drivers
Building awareness of and preventing dangerous driving behaviors starts with drivers – 59% say improving driver education will have the greatest impact on road safety. However, there’s an opportunity to expedite safer roadways with a collective effort to share, monitor and respond to driver-permissioned driving behavior data. Drivers generate massive amounts of data as they drive, use their phones, and move throughout the day. This information can offer vital insights into accident-prone areas, dangerous driving behavior, and ways to develop a safer, more efficient, and more equitable transportation system.
Arity solves for this through partnerships with consumer mobile apps, insurance programs, and more, to deliver education to drivers. By providing coaching and actionable insights to drivers who choose to share their driving behavior, drivers are better equipped to understand and improve their driving behaviors, ultimately contributing to overall road safety.
Driving Change with Driving Data
Drivers are willing to share their data with entities that directly impact their wallets and their experience behind the wheel – 54% would share with auto insurance companies to lower insurance policy prices, and 51% would share with vehicle manufacturers for improved safety features. However, 58% of U.S. drivers aren’t willing to share their driving data with city, state, and federal officials – a missed opportunity to better inform safer intersections, roadway investments and traffic and safety policies.
When asked who is responsible for curbing these behaviors and creating safer roadways, 79% of drivers said drivers themselves shoulder the responsibility of improving driving safety. However, Arity believes it will take a collaborative effort among everyone who relies on and works in transportation, including drivers, vehicle manufacturers, tech companies, governments, advocacy groups, city planners, marketers, and auto insurers, to make transportation safer and smarter. This mission requires insights that can only come from data on how people move. It’s time to build, share, and use this data at scale. To learn more, visit arity.com.
Click here to download the report: Data in action: Solving the driving safety crisis.
Arity
Arity is a mobility data and analytics company that provides data-driven solutions to companies invested in transportation, enabling them to deliver mobility services that are smarter, safer, and more economical. Arity collects and analyzes over a trillion miles of driving data to create a greater understanding of how people move. With the world’s largest driving dataset tied to insurance claims collected through mobile devices, in-car devices, and vehicles themselves, Arity derives unique insights that help insurers, developers, marketers, and communities understand and predict driving behavior at scale. Arity was founded by the Allstate Corporation in 2016.