Voluntary internalization of speeding externalities with vehicle insurance

High speed is an important determinant of accidents for speeders as well as for other motorists. This paper develops a framework for analyzing instruments that encourage drivers to internalize the full consequences of their behavior with respect to choice of speed using Pay-As-You-Speed (PAYS) insurance, possibly as an extension of Pay-As-You-Drive (PAYD) insurance. We demonstrate how the combination of a Pigovian taxation scheme and PAYS can be designed in a setting involving two principals (the state and an insurance company) that affect the incentives of commuters to choose between driving and other modes of transport and for those that use the car mode to drive carefully. While the government is assumed to maximize overall social efficiency and therefore wants to implement marginal cost pricing, insurance companies do actuarial pricing, i.e. average cost pricing within risk classes that are homogeneous to the degree that the insurers have information about actual behavior. PAYS insurance improves the insurance industry’s possibility to differentiate premiums according to behavior and therefore to target risk classes in a better way than today. Moreover, since our framework is designed to accomplish differentiation by self-selection, compulsory regulation is not necessary, although there may be reason for the government to facilitate the implementation of the new technology.     

Heavy-duty trucking and the energy efficiency paradox: Evidence from focus groups and interviews

Theory suggests that profit maximizing firms have an incentive to incorporate cost-effective technologies into their products. However, simple net present value calculations comparing upfront costs of fuel-saving technologies to future savings suggest this is not always the case. This puzzle is commonly referred to as the “energy efficiency paradox.” A growing number of empirical studies examine why households may under-invest in energy efficiency. Fewer studies examine similar undervaluation by businesses. We explore investment decisions within the heavy-duty trucking sector for fuel-saving technologies via focus groups and interviews to gain insight into what factors might explain apparent underinvestment in fuel-saving technologies. We find some evidence that market failures related to lack of information about technology performance and network externalities contribute to slow adoption of some technologies. However, information about new technologies for tractors seems to generate limited spillovers. There is also some evidence of split incentives between owners and drivers, though companies have invested in a variety of technologies and approaches in an attempt to address these effects. Other factors important in trucking investment decisions that are not classic market failures include tradeoffs between fuel economy and other valued truck attributes, as well as uncertainty and risk associated with new technologies if decision-makers are loss averse.     

Travel satisfaction effects of changes in public transport usage

We study the effects of public transport use incentives on changes in travel satisfaction of participants that undergo behavior change. We use the results of an experiment conducted recently at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and requiring a temporary use of public transport for commuting to work by habitual car drivers. We observe an increase in the average level of satisfaction with the commute to work of participants who switch to public transport after the temporary intervention. This increase is sustained to some extent several months after the intervention. Moreover, participants’ dissatisfaction is almost eliminated. We conclude that public transport use incentives are promising not only for encouraging sustainable travel behavior but also for increasing people’s satisfaction.     

Rural environment stakeholders and policy making: Willingness to pay to reduce road transportation pollution impact in the Western Pyrenees

In spite of the strategic national and regional development importance of transportation infrastructures, road transportation is one of the major sources of externalities worldwide. Using data collected from 900 residents living in 14 rural towns near the roads crossing the Spanish Pyrenees, we model citizens’ willingness-to-pay (WTP) to reduce noise and air pollution. We collect the data adopting a contingent valuation method (CVM) design and we analyze the data employing a Zero-Inflated Ordered Probit (ZIOP) model, which allows us to account for an excessive number of zero observations. Our results are in contrast with previous studies’ results with regard to environmental attitudes and socio-economic profiles of residents. Our findings indicate that the stakeholders living near major roads have higher incentives to offset environmental costs. Also, younger, better educated, and more environmentally-aware citizens are willing to pay more to reduce externalities, as they are influenced by their values and environmentally friendly sub-culture, possibly fostered during the past 30 years of green movement worldwide campaigning.     

Intelligent transportation system and traffic safety – drivers perception and acceptance of electronic speed checkers

Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) can play an important role in reducing risks and increasing traffic safety. Discussion as to whether a technological approach or a behavioral approach is the right way to achieve a safer traffic environment forms a point of departure for this paper. On the one hand, there are the technicians who emphasize technology as the way towards safer traffic. Behaviorists, on the other hand, view the drivers’ behavior as fundamental and argue that education and incentive-oriented policies are essential in order to influence the driver and therefore increase traffic safety. Independent of the approach advocated a successful outcome of either a technological improvement, or an information campaign, has to be based on a high level of acceptance among potential users. In order to increase traffic safety, it is therefore essential to recognize driver motivation and attitudes. In this paper we focus on drivers’ attitudes towards risk, traffic safety and safety measures. A study of drivers’ attitudes and acceptance of an electronic device for speed checking (which the drivers tested for nine months) indicated a high acceptance level. The drivers perceived that they had both become more aware of traffic regulations and behaved in accordance with safety regulations.     

Vehicle insurance and the risk of road traffic accidents

Given the upward trend in incidences of road traffic accidents (RTAs) over recent years, in order to mitigate the financial losses arising from such accidents, governments around the world nowadays generally encourage, or even require, drivers to purchase appropriate vehicle insurance. The primary aim of this study is to examine whether RTAs are directly related to the purchase of vehicle insurance, with our examination of data on vehicle damage insurance policyholders revealing that those drivers who purchase more insurance coverage have a higher probability of being involved in accidents, as a result of which, they will tend to submit more claims. This indicates that insurance coverage might contain information which can be used to assess the probability risk levels of RTAs. We also find that drivers with less safety awareness will tend to purchase more coverage, and that those who purchase more coverage will, in turn, tend to have more accidents and submit more claims. Our findings, which provide a number of road traffic policy implications, would appear to justify the use of the bonus–malus system.     

北京驾驶员培训行业需求预测和发展研究

机动车驾驶员的素质能够对城市交通运行产生重大影响,良好的技术水平和高尚道德素质的驾驶员,对于保证城市交通安全运行和人民生命财产的安全至关重要。通过开展驾驶员培训市场需求总量的预测研究,能够有效引导培训市场的合理竞争,提升驾驶员培训行业的高质量发展。本文系统分析了驾驶员培训市场需求预测的方法,以北京驾培市场为实例,基于城市新总规,综合考虑经济社会发展、城市人口变化、城市机动车调控和驾驶证饱和率等多种因素,预测未来培训市场需求情况。根据预测结果和市场培训能力对比,提出了针对行业总量发展的对策建议,也能为国内城市进行驾培需求预测研究和行业发展提供参考。     

驾驶人安全意识体验式训练装置研究

通过对目前常用驾驶人安全意识培训方法的对比,认为体验式培训为最适合的培训方法;进一步对我国2007-2010年间大型道路交通事故特征进行分析,得出驾乘人员不系安全带是引起人员伤亡一大原因。通过设计研发碰撞、翻转两个体验式训练装置,使驾乘人员在保证安全的前提下真切感受道路交通事故发生瞬间安全带对人体的保护作用,有效提高驾驶人的安全意识,减少道路交通事故的发生及人员的伤亡。     

Commuter rail accessibility and house values: The case of the Montreal South Shore,Canada, 1992–2009

While public transportation (PT) plays a crucial role in the social and environmental dimensions, its impacts on the location rent remain poorly known. However, there is a strong connection between PT infrastructures and real estate markets since the former may generate externalities that can influence sales prices. This paper aims at estimating the actual effect of implementing a commuter train service between a major city (Montreal, Canada) and its southern periphery occurring in 2000–2003. Using a difference-in-differences (DID) estimator in the hedonic price model for single-family house sales between 1992 and 2009, the paper estimates the direct marginal price impact of a new commuter train service following changes in access to stations. Results suggest that the opening of a new commuter train service on the Montreal South Shore generates a location premium for houses located in the stations’ vicinity (as measured through walking distance and car driving time) as opposed to houses that do not experience any improvement in accessibility to the commuter train service, either in space or in time. In addition, the new service raises property tax income for involved municipalities by several million dollars a year through enhanced property values.     

The impact of car specifications,prices and incentives for battery electric vehicles in Norway: Choices of heterogeneous consumers

Electric vehicles (EVs), specifically Battery EVs (BEVs), can offer significant energy and emission savings over internal combustion engine vehicles. Norway has a long history of research and government incentives for BEVs. The BEV market in Norway allows us to fully examine consumers’ BEV choices influenced by car specifications, prices and government incentives (public bus lanes access, toll waiver and charging stations). The Random-Coefficient Discrete Choice Model (referred to as the BLP model) is applied to understand the choices of heterogeneous personal consumers and business buyers. Our study is instantiated on the entire EV sales data in Norway from 2011 to 2013, as well as a set of demographics at the municipality level. The results suggest significant positive effects of BEV technology improvement, space, toll waiver and charging station density on EV demand for both personal consumers and business buyers. However, the effects on business buyers may be generally less pronounced than on personal consumers. Interestingly, bus lanes access demonstrates a negative impact for personal consumers, possibly due to consumers’ concern regarding bus lane congestion. In addition, preferences on the BEV price can vary statistically among consumers with different income levels. Compared to the BEV technology development, demographical features and municipal incentives may have generally less impacts on market shares within the BEV market.     

Impact of government incentives on the market penetration of electric vehicles in Australia

Incentives to buy and use electric vehicles (EVs) may influence individuals’ decisions to do so. To examine these impacts, a latent class discrete choice model is developed to analyse consumer preferences related to EV attributes and related government incentives. Data was collected from a stated preference survey of 1,076 residents of New South Wales (NSW), Australia. According to the results, the proposed latent constructs classify respondents into five segments. The segments are then used to distinguish respondent behaviours regarding EV attributes and related government incentives. The results show that rebate on the upfront cost of an EV is the most preferred one-off financial incentive, because EVs are expected to be expensive, especially in Australia which has a very small EV market at present. Furthermore, rebates on energy bills and parking fees are also well-received, as these things are expensive in Sydney, Australia. Thus, operational incentives for discounts on energy bills and parking fees may facilitate the success of EVs in NSW.     

Autonomous cars and dynamic bottleneck congestion: The effects on capacity,value of time and preference heterogeneity

‘Autonomous cars’ are cars that can drive themselves without human control. Autonomous cars can safely drive closer together than cars driven by humans, thereby possibly increasing road capacity. By allowing drivers to perform other activities in the vehicle, they may reduce the value of travel time losses (VOT). We investigate the effects of autonomous cars using a dynamic equilibrium model of congestion that captures three main elements: the resulting increase in capacity, the decrease in the VOT for those who acquire one and the implications of the resulting changes in the heterogeneity of VOTs. We do so for three market organizations: private monopoly, perfect competition and public supply. Even though an increased share of autonomous cars raises average capacity, it may hurt existing autonomous car users as those who switch to an autonomous car will impose increased congestion externalities due to their altered departure time behaviour. Depending on which effect dominates, switching to an autonomous vehicle may impose a net negative or positive externality. Often public supply leads to 100% autonomous cars, but it may be optimal to have a mix of car types, especially when there is a net negative externality. With a positive (negative) externality, perfect competition leads to an undersupply (oversupply) of autonomous cars, and a public supplier needs to subsidise (tax) autonomous cars to maximise welfare. A monopolist supplier ignores the capacity effect and adds a mark-up to its price.     

Do people drive safer when accidents are more expensive: Testing for moral hazard in experience rating schemes

Using individual policies and claims data from the Croatian mandatory motor insurance we test the theoretical proposition that under moral hazard, experience rated pricing scheme should generate the negative state dependence in claims, i.e. that drivers should drive more safely after they had an accident. The empirical challenge in these tests is to disentangle the state dependence from unobserved heterogeneity. We propose a simple approach based on the explicit reliance on the cost of future accidents function which is used to filter out the pure incentives effect, whereas the bonus-malus scale is used to control for pure heterogeneity. Our results confirm the existence of negative dependence in claims indicating the presence of significant moral hazard effect. Increasing a 3-year cost of having an accident by approximately US$20 decreases the probability of having an accident by 6.5%.     

Evaluation of total risk exposure and insurance premiums in the maritime industry

The empirical evaluation of maritime risk exposure is based on the monetary value at risk (MVR) that incorporates individual safety quality data of about 130,000 vessels, insurable values related to various potential damages, and proxies for fractions of values lost at incidents. MVR provides a tool to enhance strategic planning of maritime administrations and insurance providers, which is illustrated by a high level comparison of annual risk exposure with insurance premiums for 2010–2014. The analysis reveals a global annual insurable value of 30.6 trillion USD with associated annual MVR of 38.8 billion USD for very serious and serious incidents. Although oil tankers show the highest risk exposure (1.75 million USD per tanker per year), safety qualities are found to be best for this ship type (1.4% annual incident risk) and worst for container vessels (2.8%). Annual growth rates in total risk exposure are mostly positive with highest value for dry bulk carriers (27.8%), whereas risk exposure tends to decline for pollution of oil tankers (−2.0%) and passenger vessels (−11.3%), and for loss of life of oil tankers (−1.9%) and dry bulk carriers (−1.4%). Comparison across administrative dimensions reveals that most risk exposure lies with old open registries and with beneficial owners and the Document of Compliance companies located in high income countries. Comparison with global insurance premiums suggests reasonably adequate coverage of maritime risks (excluding cargo) with under-insurance of risk by around 5% (about 1 billion USD per year), with some uncertainties remaining for actual loss fractions of the involved damages.     

The effects of attitudes and personality traits on mode choice

We hypothesise that differences in people’s attitudes and personality traits lead them to attribute varying importance to environmental considerations, safety, comfort, convenience and flexibility. Differences in personality traits can be revealed not only in the individuals’ choice of transport, but also in other actions of their everyday lives—such as how much they recycle, whether they take precautions or avoid dangerous pursuits. Conditioning on a set of exogenous individual characteristics, we use indicators of attitudes and personality traits to form latent variables for inclusion in an, otherwise standard, discrete mode choice model. With a sample of Swedish commuters, we find that both attitudes towards flexibility and comfort, as well as being pro-environmentally inclined, influence the individual’s choice of mode. Although modal time and cost still are important, it follows that there are other ways, apart from economic incentives, to attract individuals to the, from society’s perspective, desirable public modes of transport. Our results should provide useful information to policy-makers and transportation planners developing sustainable transportation systems.     

Validation of in-car observations,a method for driver assessment

An in-car observation method with human observers in the car was studied to establish whether observers could be trained to observe safety variables and register driver’s behaviour in a correct and coherent way, and whether the drivers drove in their normal driving style, despite the presence of the observers. The study further discussed the observed variables from a safety perspective. First three observers were trained in the observation method and on-road observations were carried out. Their observations were then compared with a key representing a correct observation. After practising the observation method the observers showed a high correlation with the key. To establish whether the test drivers drove in a normal way during the in-car observations, comparisons of 238 spot-speed measurements were carried out. Driver’s speeds when driving their own private cars were compared with their speeds during the in-car observations. The analysis showed that the drivers drove in the same way when being observed as they did normally. Most of the variables studied in the in-car observations had a well documented relevance to traffic safety. Overall, in-car observation was shown to be a reliable and valid method to observe driver behaviour, and observed changes provide relevant data on traffic safety.     

Do cooperative systems make drivers’ car-following behavior safer?

The main goal of in-vehicle technologies and co-operative services is to reduce congestion and increase traffic safety. This is achieved by alerting drivers on risky traffic conditions ahead of them and by exchanging traffic and safety related information for the particular road segment with nearby vehicles. Road capacity, level of service, safety, and air pollution are impacted to a large extent by car-following behavior of drivers. Car-following behavior is an essential component of micro-simulation models. This paper investigates the impact of an infrastructure-to-vehicle (I2V) co-operative system on drivers’ car-following behavior. Test drivers in this experiment drove an instrumented vehicle with and without the system. Collected trajectory data of the subject vehicle and the vehicle in front, as well as socio-demographic characteristics of the test drivers were used to estimate car-following models capturing their driving behavior with and without the I2V system. The results show that the co-operative system harmonized the behavior of drivers and reduced the range of acceleration and deceleration differences among them. The observed impact of the system was largest on the older group of drivers.     

Mining factors affecting taxi drivers’ incomes using GPS trajectories

Taxis provide essential transport services in urban areas. In the taxi industry, the income level remains a cause of concern for taxi drivers as well as regulators. Mining underlying factors affecting the income level will not only benefit the newcomers and low-income drivers but also assist in developing effective optimization algorithms for taxi operations. This paper intends to disclose the factors affecting incomes along with their quantitative influence by mining over 167 million GPS records from nearly 8000 taxis in Shanghai. We first identify a marked difference in drivers’ incomes and categorize drivers into three income levels accordingly. We next investigate the overall search-delivery process, thereby defining several factors that may affect the income level. We then develop a generalized multi-level ordered logit (GMOL) model to find the significant factors that influence incomes. Finally, we compute the elasticity for those significant factors and present their contributions, as well as challenge some preconceived ideas regarding how to earn high incomes.     

Speed behaviour of car drivers: A statistical analysis of acceptance of changes in speed policies in the Netherlands

Lowering the speed of car drivers will have positive impacts on environmental pollution and the number of road accidents. It is therefore a potentially interesting policy option for governments which want to reduce negative externalities of transport. In this paper, the acceptance of such policies is analysed by means of a survey questionnaire among car drivers and public transport users. First, an analysis is presented on the general speed behaviour, the behaviour on distinct road types, the acceptance of lower limits, and the acceptance and perception of electronic speed limiters. Next, a statistical analysis of subgroups is carried out. It is concluded that the speed of car drivers is, in general, not considered to be a main problematic issue by drivers and non-drivers; therefore, there is little scope for the acceptance of changes in speed policies. When speed policies are changed (lower limits), it seems to be most effective to emphasize safety aspects in order to increase the support of the public. However, psychological factors of speed behaviour may play an important role in this respect.