Coaster® – The Smooth Driver Monitoring App – Map Harsh Braking Driving for Behavior, Routing, and Infrastructure Change

Coaster – Mapping Harsh Braking Driving Events

“We’ve found hard braking to be one of the most highly predictive variables for predicting future crashes.” – Progressive Insurance

Coaster® ties harsh braking driving to location for risk mapping and risk reduction!

Mapping Harsh Braking for Smart Cities, Fleet Vehicles, Less Stop and Go Driving

Coaster®, the Smooth Driver Monitoring App is useful for changing driver behavior on routes that a driver frequents, such as daily commutes or delivery routes. Coaster monitors driving for sudden hard braking, logs the locations of the abrupt hard braking, and displays the locations on a map. Over time, there may be clusters of markers observed at certain locations, indicating higher risk. Where there are clusters, traffic engineers may research the issue, fleet managers may re-route and/or train, or drivers may change behavior and instead “coast” through those areas where frequent harsh braking occurs.

Coaster for Fleets

The average cost of a loss related to fleet vehicle accidents is approximately $70,000, which is almost twice the cost of the average workplace injury. Automotive Fleet

Beyond just driver scores, Coaster helps identify risk associated with particular locations, enabling visualization of the higher risk location(s) and providing the ability for route optimization and/or behavior change, for decreased collision risk. An individual’s sudden stop history is helpful in increasing safety for the individual driver or across the fleet.

Coaster for Smart Cities

How Data Helps Cities Achieve Vision Zero Safety Goals
‘the ability to assess high level driving characteristics and behaviors at aggregate in an entire jurisdiction allows for quick identification of specific hazardous driving areas’

With the marginal cost of a First Responder deployment ranging from several hundred to several thousand for a collision incident, the value of the Coaster app for “Smart Cities” traffic engineers and departments of transportation lies in “crowdsourcing” and using the aggregate data of drivers using the app for accident reduction. The data can be helpful in finding clusters of harsh braking within the municipality, indicating potential “hot spots” for further investigation for possible accident reduction. This may lead to actions such as changed traffic signal timing or other corrective actions.

Coaster for Individual Drivers

How can you be a safer driver?

Traditional driver ranking ties frequent harsh braking with the driver. Coaster instead ties harsh braking to location. For an individual driver, the repeat routes are often the daily commute and frequent errands. This app can be helpful in learning where harsh braking cluster location are on those routes, enabling and encouraging you to change behavior and instead “coast” through those locations.

Hopefully, this app is “boring” most of the time. If so, congratulations, you are a “Smooth Driver” on smooth routes.