Speeding is riskiest type of aggressive driving, study finds
University of Waterloo researchers analysed data from 28M crashes
Speeding is the riskiest kind of aggressive driving, according to a new study from the University of Waterloo.
Researchers at the university analyzed data from 28 million trips catalogued on-board devices in vehicles.
They compared aggressive driving behaviours based on four key indicators — speeding, hard acceleration, hard braking and taking hard corners.
Their research found speeding was the only statistically significant link to crashing.
"The problem with speeding is there isn't this negative reinforcement cycle," Ella Hilal, professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Waterloo said.
Arriving early and avoiding accidents despite speeding "negatively reinforces" people's bad driving behaviour, she said.
Hilal said rewarding good driving could counteract that issue, and cities could work with insurance companies to monitor customer's driving behaviours and provide speedy discounts on insurance to drivers.