WHAT PROBLEMS DOES CO-PILOT SOLVE?

Over the past two decades, there has been an explosion in the availability of road safety data. Better reporting systems and technological advancements have made it easier to spot and respond to trends early. Telemetry data gives fleet managers and insurance companies incredibly accurate data about driving styles and potential risks, such as excessive speeding or regular harsh braking. AI is even helping produce DNA-level driver profiles that give clues about where and when to deploy education, incentives and penalties.

I think we can all agree, the one thing we're not short of now is data. Often, it's easy to talk about data as if it's education. Take, for example, the traffic light style dashboards used by fleets and insurance companies. That's like a math teacher writing test scores up on the board, dropping the chalk and walking out of the room. Holding up a mirror can show us what's wrong but fixing the problems by changing behaviours is a much more complicated task.

Traditionally the solution has been for every organisation to address these issues using their own resources - either those they create themselves or those they commission. At Co-Pilot, we believe there is minimal benefit to owning road safety content outright. In fact, there are plenty of reasons to share a toolbox. Here are just a few:

• commissioning high-quality content takes a lot of time

• producing in-house content requires experience, equipment and expertise

• maintaining the accuracy of content is a big task in itself

• targeted education means you need lots of content

• designing and building bespoke content is expensive

Despite having some of the safest roads in the world, the number of people killed or seriously injured on the UK's roads each year is shocking. Some well-intentioned campaigners believe that broad-brush campaigns like the TV adverts of yesteryear are the solution. In reality, the issues are more nuanced, and the ways in which people consume information has changed significantly in recent years.

Co-Pilot recognises this shift by creating a goal-centred toolbox full of tools that nudge road users towards better attitudes, safer behaviours and higher levels of skill. We wish it were as easy as creating a pithy advert and circulating it as widely as possible. But the reality is major behaviour change often requires lots of little steps.