ATG Risk Solutions and Vehicle Data Science Awarded SBIR from US Dept. of Transportation
Seattle, WA, and Oakland, CA (PRWEB) February 20, 2015 -- ATG Risk Solutions (ATG), creators of the FAIRTM Score a safe driving index, and the first telematics data clearinghouse to enable usage-based insurance (UBI) programs for auto insurance carriers, and Vehicle Data Science Corp. (VDS), specialists in advanced vehicle safety systems and analysis, jointly announced today they have been awarded a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT). The grant funds will be used by the two firms to validate driving scoring models and create a scoring system that will permit the use of data on vehicle performance and the driven environment to predict driving risk and improve driving safety performance.
According to VDS Co-founder and CEO Chris Wilson, “The SBIR will test the theory that scoring driving trips must be done by comparing properties of vehicle movement, or ‘kinematics’, to derive true predictive value. While knowing when a driver exceeds the posted speed for a segment of roadway is helpful, academic research shows a strong likelihood that risk may be better assessed and predicted based on how the driver is performing in relation to other drivers on that same segment of road at the same time.”
The analysis is derived from VDS’s Kinematic Map, or K-MapTM, which uses data from myriad telematics sources. K-Map matches existing road data with the known vehicle location, time and speed, allowing driving performance to be compared to a common standard. The result of this match, Wilson says, will give a clearer picture of how safe or risky the driver is actually driving the vehicle.
The background data for the study will come from ATG’s telematics data clearinghouse. The Clearinghouse allows auto insurers to access and verify vehicle information and driving analytics to enhance their underwriting and ratings processes. ATG’s databank aggregates and normalizes driving data from a variety of sources, including a large number of telematics service providers who collect the data on behalf of their fleet management customers. ATG’s FAIR (Forward-Looking Assessment of Indexed Risk) Score, relying on the billions of miles of driving data in the ATG Clearinghouse, establishes a reliable standard for evaluating driving performance that benefits privacy-conscious consumers, auto manufacturers, fleet operators and insurers alike.
“With the world’s largest commercial vehicle telematics database, the ATG Clearinghouse serves as a secure and trusted repository of detailed data on how, where and when vehicles are being driven – more than 25 billion miles of real-world driving experience, and growing,” notes ATG Risk Solutions President Chris Carver. “We’re providing the historical and contextual data to layer onto the K-Map being developed by VDS, to provide insight into actual driving performance. We believe this combination will demonstrate to the USDOT that, indeed, a transparent, predictive driver scoring system can be developed, leading to new possibilities for roadway usage and our transportation infrastructure.”
VDS’s K-Map uses vehicle traces to create a high-accuracy, information-rich map of historical driving patterns. Its innovative design depicts how roads are actually driven, which enables detection of unsafe maneuvers, scoring of drivers against their peers, and reliably setting an autonomous vehicle's path and speed.
Following an introduction by Allen Greenberg of the US Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration, Wilson and Carver will be discussing the SBIR’s preliminary findings in a presentation at the upcoming Casualty Actuarial Society (CAS) meeting March 11th in Dallas, TX. The presentation will focus on using real-time driving data to improve rating accuracy and segmentation for commercial lines auto insurance policies.
An early-stage technology company focused on data acquisition, storage, management and analytics, Seattle-based ATG Risk Solutions was founded in March 2014 to enable and propel the use of commercial vehicle telematics data by property and casualty insurers for improved risk assessment, leading to both improved profit and policyholder benefits from safe driving.
About Vehicle Data Science:
Oakland, CA-based Vehicle Data Science (VDS) is dedicated to making roadways safer and more efficient. Founded in 2013 with support from the National Science Foundation, VDS combines decades of experience in transportation, connected vehicles, and big data analytics to create the most advanced roadway / driving models available. With this unique expertise, VDS is building software products that touch every aspect of the automotive ecosystem, helping bring to market self-driving vehicles, advanced safety systems, and next-generation insurance products. For more information, please visit http://www.vds-corp.com.
About ATG Risk Solutions:
ATG Risk Solutions a leading provider of connected vehicle data, related data, and proprietary vehicle safety scoring resources for underwriting and claims for the property and casualty (P&C) insurance industry. The company facilitates the transaction between Telematics Service Providers (TSPs) and their business fleet customers’ insurance carriers in a unique data clearinghouse that is shaping the future of auto insurance. With the world’s largest telematics vehicle database, ATG Risk connects policyholders with their insurers by tapping into TSP- and mobile-device-generated, connected-vehicle data. The ATG Clearinghouse offers a trusted and secure means by which the insurer can verify and assess the risk of covered vehicles in a policyholder’s fleet, helping insurers improve underwriting consistency, and helping fleet customers access insurance credits and benefits. For more information, please visit http://www.atgrisk.com.
JIM WHITE, ATG Risk Solutions, http://www.atgrisk.com, +1 6268403796, [email protected]
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