Discovery Insure Says AI Driving Coach Cut Risky Driving by Up to 10%

Discovery Insure says its AI-powered Advanced Driving Instructor has cut risky driving events by 3% to 10% among clients set coaching goals, in the first results since the feature launched in January.

The tool analyses each driver’s patterns and targets five behaviours: phone use while driving, speeding, harsh braking, harsh acceleration and harsh cornering.

“These improvements are sustained, with 68% of clients who achieve a goal maintaining the improved behaviour the following month,” chief analytics officer Michael Rodewijk told ITWeb.

One habit at a time

Rather than tackling every bad habit at once, the system identifies a driver’s priority behaviour, turns it into a short-term measurable goal and sends personalised notifications, reassessing performance before setting the next target.

Between 45% and 50% of clients receive a personalised goal each month, and more than 30 million coaching notifications have been sent since launch. Daily activity on the app is up 25%.

Phone-use alerts have generated the most coaching activity and the strongest response, Discovery says.

What’s working

Engagement appears to matter. Clients who use the app daily have a 49% higher goal achievement rate, and those who hit one target are 2.6 times more likely to hit the next. “Streak goals” — meeting a target over a set number of days — have shown 3.7 times the improvement in driving behaviour, Rodewijk said.

The company is also testing how wording, frequency and presentation of notifications affect behaviour.

The approach was informed by research Discovery conducted with Johns Hopkins University and UK behavioural consultancy Affective Mobility. Discovery Insure covered more than 278,000 vehicles in South Africa as of June 2025, and its Vitality Drive programme has more than 550,000 drivers.

“All analytics use only data that clients have expressly agreed to share,” Rodewijk said, adding that the company complies with POPIA.