Speeding is the riskiest kind of aggressive driving, says researcher

According to a unique analysis of data from onboard devices in vehicles, speeding is the riskiest kind of aggressive driving. Researchers at the University of Waterloo examined data from 28 million trips for possible links between four bad driving behaviors - speeding, hard braking, hard acceleration, and hard cornering - and the likelihood of crashes.

Stefan Steiner, a statistics professor in Waterloo's Faculty of Mathematics said, "For insurance companies using this telematics data to assess who is a good risk and who isn't, our suggestion based on the data is to look at speed, at people driving too fast."

The data which was analyzed by the researchers were from insurance companies in Ontario and Texas who had on-board diagnostic devices installed in their vehicles.

"Having this information exposed and understood allows people to wrap their minds around their true risks and improve their driving behaviors," she quoted. "We are super pumped about its potential."

However, Steiner quoted the study was limited by several unknowns, such as different drivers using the same vehicle, and more research is needed to verify the results.

(With inputs from University of Waterloo)