> Simply letting people know that they had a hard braking event is an effective mechanism for behavior change
Has this been studied in isolation? Many of the tools that notify upon hard braking also are used to impose financial penalties for doing so... I suspect people may be reacting to the financial incentives.
Yep. We work with CMT and we’ve both done extensive testing on this. I think that often people don’t necessarily know what a hard braking event actually means, or how it’s quantified. Giving that realtime feedback helps close that gap in understanding
When people learn to do things by reacting to inputs, they learn much better when the input comes soon after the action/inaction they are trying to train, rather than long after. When you can tie specific acts as a driver to a later financial penalty it helps you learn to avoid the specific acts, otherwise you'd stuck having to figure out in three weeks when the bill comes around what you were doing on the date the insurance statement flagged as a hard stop.
Anecdotally: I leave the fuel efficiency display as the instrument cluster display on the hybrid that I drive and it significantly changes both my acceleration and braking behavior.
There is a minor financial aspect (price of fuel), but I’m far more interested in seeing if I can get a better “green score” at the end of the drive.
Does it matter why? The important part is getting people to change behavior.
of course if they change such that they don't break hard when needed that is bad, but if the change such that they don't need to break hard in the first place because they slow down in places that are dangerious that is the point.
> Does it matter why? The important part is getting people to change behavior.
Yeah, if you want to do that, it would be helpful to know whether a financial incentive is required for the effect or not.