New Renault cars sold in the UK from this summer will have a ‘rank my driving safety’ feature, that means the car will deduct points for drivers who set off any of the on-board safety alerts or driver assistance settings, or are inattentive.
The technology, known as the Renault Safety Coach and already fitted to cars in Europe, means your new Renault will rank your driving performance out of 100 on any given journey, knocking off points for transgressions such as getting too close to the car in front, crossing white lines, failing to pay attention or – of course – breaking the speed limit.
For now, the standard of your driving will be a private matter between you and your car, but the technology will sharpen fears among some drivers that data generated on board could be made available to insurers or the authorities – potentially signalling a new era of ‘big brother’ oversight on UK roads.
Other drivers will welcome the introduction of new systems such as this, and some reports suggest Renault in France is so confident that people will engage with Safety Coach that there’s a possibility that a new app could be developed to ‘gamify’ results or even compete with other drivers for the highest scores.
Renault UK told Auto Express that Safety Coach will be introduced on all models launched after this summer, and the expectation is that it will appear first as part of the standard kit on the new Renault Scenic – a model already fitted with the system in Europe. We’ve yet to try the system here, but it works in a similar way to the Driver Eco Score on the Renault Austral, which has a dashboard display showing you how well you’ve performed in terms of acceleration and anticipation after every journey.
Even if drivers choose to ignore the Safety Coach, it will be running in the background as long as the driver assistance aids are not switched off – which drivers must do at the start of every journey, due to system default settings mandated by European regulators.
What do you think about Renault’s introduction of its driver Safety Coach? Let us know in the comments below…