Rashid Galadanci
Driver Technologies
CEO and Co-Founder
Rashid Galadanci is CEO of Driver Technologies, an AI-based mobility tech company that delivers a safer driving experience, which he co-founded in 2018. Rashid was inspired to start Driver Technologies to share the benefits of advanced vehicle technologies without barriers to access and improve safety for everyone. He tells Qorus’ Boris Plantier more about it.
What led to the creation of Driver Technologies?
When I was younger, my dad was a passenger in a severe car accident in Nigeria. He and the driver survived, thankfully, because his friend was affluent and safety-focused enough to import a Volvo, which was incredibly rare in the region.
Following the accident, I gained an appreciation for the benefits of advancing vehicle safety and technology while addressing the inequality in access to new vehicles equipped with safety technology, as the average age of a car on the road in the US is over 12.6 years old.
Through connecting with my co-founders, we founded Driver Technologies to make roads safe and accessible for everyone through the technology available in our pockets via a smartphone.
Opportunities and threats facing financial services providers in the mobility revolution
Could you present Driver Technologies' offer?
Driver Technologies (Driver) is an AI-based mobility tech company that delivers a safer, connected driving experience via our top-rated AI driving copilot app, Driver®. The app transforms a driver’s smartphone into a connected vehicle service designed to improve road safety and make mobility technology more accessible. Driver allows users to video record their trip, while receiving safety alerts such as forward collision, driver drowsiness and distraction warnings. It also offers cloud-based video storage, roadside assistance services, coaching and scoring capabilities.
Through our cloud platform, Driver Cloud, drivers can store videos from their trips to analyze and dissect telematics and video data. For example, drivers can track detailed event-level breakdowns with speed, accelerometer, location and video data to understand what occurred during a specific incident, whether an accident occurred or not. Drivers can also use this telematics data to help coach and improve driving behavior while maintaining driver privacy. Users can choose to share their driving videos, AI analysis, scores, safety warnings and location with interested parties such as insurers, employers and family members.
Last year, we studied 17,000 drivers to analyze their driving patterns after using the Driver next-gen dash cam app for 20+ hours, and we found that the users were 11x less likely to speed, 4x less likely to run stop signs, 3x less likely to tailgate, and 3x less likely to hard brake.
Driver Technologies is the leading platform enabling insurance companies to incorporate HD video and telematics into consumer and commercial insurance claims. We have multiple ongoing partnerships with insurers that will not only allow drivers to receive a discount when using a dash cam and provide HD video and telematics during the claims process, but also accept telematics and video from third-party hardware (like dash cams, OEM data or telematics hardware) via the Driver Cloud.
Additionally, we launched our Driver Score capabilities as the first video telematics-based score using your mobile device, that helps insurance companies underwrite and classify the risk instead of implementing traditional factors such as demographics and credit scores. The score is derived from telematics based on the aforementioned AI analysis of the user’s driving videos. We’ve seen many insurance companies turning to driving scores like Driver Score to underwrite and classify the risk of insuring drivers to determine premiums. Through safer driving practices and coaching, we know drivers can improve their Driver Score allowing them to earn the potential for insurance premium discounts.
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What's coming next for Driver Technologies?
At Driver Technologies, we’re excited about our next chapter. We’re always evolving our AI capabilities based on real-world incidents that our drivers experience and we’ve officially launched our in-vehicle connected car capabilities via Google built-in services and other OEM platforms.
Over the upcoming months, we’re interested in evolving AI within the Driver app to include more mapping features, AI notifications to alert drivers in their network about road conditions or incidents ahead, and an AI driving voice assistant that will help provide coaching and safety insights in real time.
We’re also continuing to enter partnerships with commercial fleets and various insurance carriers to provide fleets with access to our convenient and user-centric driving safety app.
