Integrating road safety and environmental impact via telematics: Modeling traffic accident risk using vehicle emissions

Abstract

High‐emission private vehicles disproportionately contribute to urban air pollution and road accidents, both major public health threats and leading causes of death among young adults. Balancing individual driving behavior with collective environmental responsibility necessitates strategies that promote safer and cleaner driving. This paper presents a novel method for assessing crash risk using air pollutant emissions as exposure measures, encouraging reduced environmental impact and crash likelihood. Using over 1500 at‐fault crash claims from an insurance dataset merged with vehicle telematics data, we demonstrate that emission factor models can integrate pollutant‐based exposures into crash risk estimation. Results show that pollutant‐driven models perform comparably to traditional distance‐driven models when combined with behavioral telematics data. This approach offers an integrated framework for enhancing road safety and mitigating emissions by linking environmentally responsible driving practices with lower crash risk.