What does Brightmile understand about my driving behaviour?

We base our assessment of your driving on Five Pillars: Risk, Speeding, Distraction, Fatigue, and Eco.

 

Risk 

Risk increases when you drive too fast for your surroundings and collisions are more likely to occur around more complex road infrastructure.

A Risk Event is triggered when you either (a) drive over the legal speed limit near junctions, traffic lights, or school zones, (b) drive over the legal speed limit when travelling around sharp bends and winding roads, or (c) drive too fast to safely come to a complete stop at stop signs and give way/yield junctions.

It might sound complicated at first, but to give you a clear view of how you are performing on average over a meaningful distance, the metric we focus on is Risk Events per 62 miles (or 100 kilometres).

Therefore, your weekly average Risk score is your rolling average Risk Events per 62 miles (or 100 kilometres) of driving, as updated each day.

For the Risk pillar, we also help you understand your most common risk exposure, as well as advice on how you can improve.

The Brightmile Driver App measures the percentage of driving time spent above legal speed limits.

Your week average Speeding score is your rolling average percentage of time spent speeding, as updated each day.

We don’t focus on individual events as we feel that it is more effective to look at trends over time and identify whether you regularly exceed the limit.

Despite using the best available mapping data that is frequently updated in new releases of the app, this trend-based analysis means that if we occasionally refer to a speed limit that has subsequently been updated this won't have a material impact on your overall Speeding score.

We also give you a small buffer to make sure that are not penalised for small inaccuracies in your car speedometer.

Smartphone distraction causes around 30% of road incidents making it statistically more dangerous than drink driving

You might not realise how often you use your phone whilst driving

The Brightmile Driver App records each interaction with the smartphone whilst driving (other than a phone call conducted using a hands-free kit) as a Distraction Event.

To give you a clear view of how you are performing on average over a meaningful distance, the metric we focus on is Distraction Events per 62 miles (or 100 kilometres).

Therefore, your week average Distraction score is your rolling average Distraction Events per 62 miles (or 100 kilometres) of driving, as updated each day.

Driving fatigued increases the likelihood that you will have an accident.

We recommend that you take a short break after 2 hours of driving, so if you don’t do so you are at greater risk of fatigue.

The Fatigue Pillar measures how many minutes you have driven after 2 hours without taking a break, i.e. when you might be at greater risk of fatigue.

For example, if you make a trip of 2 hours and 27 minutes without taking a break, we would record 27 minutes at risk of Fatigue.

To give you a clear view of how you are performing on average over a meaningful distance, the metric we focus on is minutes driven at risk of Fatigue per 62 miles (or 100 kilometres).

Therefore, your week average Fatigue score is your rolling average minutes driven at risk of Fatigue per 62 miles (or 100 kilometres) of driving, as updated each day.

Driving style has a significant impact on fuel usage and therefore the environment.

The Brightmile Driver App detects incidents of harsh acceleration and harsh braking, recording each incident as an Eco event.

In order to identify harsh acceleration events from normal accelerations required in every day driving Brightmile defines harsh acceleration events as a 8m/s (18mph) speed change in 1 sec, however we look at it over a 3 second window applying extra logic relative to the speed of the vehicle to eliminate false positives from the early acceleration that is common pulling away from junctions from a standing start. In practice, this means you need to be accelerating in a deliberate and sustained manner for 2 seconds or more to trigger an eco event. 

Brightmile defines harsh braking events as -16 km/h (-10mph) over a 1 second window , however we look at it over a 3 second window applying extra logic relative to the speed of the vehicle to eliminate false positives.

To give you a clear view of how you are performing on average over a meaningful distance, the metric we focus on is Eco Events per 62 miles (or 100 kilometres).

Therefore, your week average Eco score is your rolling average Eco Events per 62 miles (or 100 kilometres) of driving, as updated each day.