Researchers find link between speeding and crashing

Wednesday, August 21, 2019

A unique analysis by engineering and mathematics researchers at the University of Waterloo showed that speeding is the riskiest kind of aggressive driving.

Data for the study – the first of its kind - was provided by insurance companies with clients in Ontario and Texas whose vehicles had been fitted with on-board devices. It covered 28 million trips.

Allaa (Ella) Hilal is an adjunct professor of electrical and computer engineering at Waterloo.

Ella Hilal

Researchers examined the data for possible links between four kinds of bad driving – speeding, hard braking, hard acceleration and hard cornering – and the likelihood of crashes.

“Some of the results are no surprise, but prior to this we had a whole industry based on intuition,” said Allaa (Ella) Hilal, an adjunct professor of electrical and computer engineering. “Now it is formulated – we know aggressive driving has an impact.”

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