Insurer USAA  and the City of San Antonio are co-sponsoring a months-long competition  to make safe driving pay off in more ways than one, News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.

The S.A.  Safest Driver Competition, said San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg,  encourages motorists in Bexar, Kendall, Guadalupe and Comal counties to  download a smart phone app that tracks five “metrics” or driver  behaviors: acceleration, speed, braking, cornering and phone-related  distractions.

“The safer  you are during your drive, the higher your score,” Nirenberg told a  Monday afternoon news media gathering at USAA’s La Cantera Parkway  complex, “and the better your chances of winning some really great cash  prizes.”

Organizers are offering a range of cash incentives, from $150 drawings for simply downloading the https://www.sasafestdriver.com/ app,  to $500 bi-weekly awards and a $10,000 overall safest driver grand  prize during the contest, which runs from Jun 11-Sept 3.

The cash prizes  total $60,000.

Art Reinhardt  with the city’s Transportation and Capital Improvements Department said  similar competitions in two other U.S. cities resulted in significant  improvements in driving habits.

“Both in  Boston and Seattle, they had upwards of a 30-percent reduction in  speeding, as well as nearly 50 percent reduction in phone distraction,”  Reinhardt said. “There is science behind the application.”

Joseph Jamiel  with safe driving app creator Cambridge Mobile Telematics said the app  offers immediate post-trip feedback, and features that allows family and  friends to compete as a group, or parents to track and analyze their  kids’ driving behavior.  The app also  assures anonymity and will disappear from participants’ phones when the  contest end, said Jamiel, a sales representative for the  Massachusetts-based technology firm.

San Antonio’s  Safest Driver Competition is also part of the Vision Zero initiative, a  multi-national project to reduce motor vehicle-related fatalities.

Full Article