All countries have road safety as a priority and are continuously working to improve it with new tech and solutions. Korea has developed a new strategy for road safety, but what’s most interesting is that it’s a game. Korea’s most widely used navigation app, Tmap, claims that its “Driving Score” helped prevent 31,366 accidents between 2018 and 2020. The figure is derived from an internal model comparing the accident rates of high-score and low-score drivers. While not independently verified, it shows how gamified safety has taken root in Korea. So how does it work? Phones that have downloaded the app track acceleration, braking, cornering, and speeding. The smoother the driving, the higher the score. Those points translate to perks like insurance discounts or gift credits. At the end of 2024, Tmap reported 19 million participants, with over 10 million earning rewards. Not wanting to be left behind, Tmap’s rivals also followed suit. Kako Map rolled out its own system in 2022, Naver Map in 2024, and even the rental platform Socar joined in. Unlike in most nations, these scores are public, integrated into apps Koreans already use daily, and ranked against other drivers so everyone can see where they’re at. “It is one of the few competitions where everyone benefits when scores rise,” said Chun Ji-yeon, of the Korea Insurance Research Institute. “Safer driving lowers accident risk, insurers save on claims, and drivers save money. It is a rare alignment of interests.” At the same time, there are concerns about privacy. In the US, firms like LexisNexis and automakers like GM have ended up in lawsuits over how driving data collected via similar apps was shared with insurers. Critics have said that this voluntary score-tracking exercise can quickly shift into a broader surveillance system with few safeguards. Source: Carscoops
