This App Is Making Safe Driving a Fierce Competition Among South Korean Drivers

This App Is Making Safe Driving a Fierce Competition Among South Korean Drivers originally appeared on Autoblog.

Safe driving is the new form of bragging rights

In South Korea, the country that's home to popular automotive brands like Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis, traffic safety is taking a positive, more conscious turn with fewer incidents over the past five years.

But while the local governments in municipalities and major cities in the United States, like New York City, have implemented traffic safety initiatives like Vision Zero to help take action and spread awareness, a new report shows that the most prominent South Korean tech companies are making a positive impact on their country's roads through a smartphone maps feature that drivers use as badge of honor.

According to a new report by The Korea Herald, the "driving score" feature of popular smartphone map applications has had a positive impact on drivers and their behaviour on the open road. In 2016, Tmap Mobility, a company spun off from SK Telecom's mobility division, introduced the "driving score" feature to its flagship Tmap application, the most popular of several applications that function similarly to Waze or Google Maps in the country.

The application records the score using the user's smartphone's built-in accelerometer to track movements like acceleration, braking, cornering, and speeding. In essence, the smoother and cleaner you drive, the higher your score and the more points you earn, which can be used towards discounts on car insurance and/or gift cards.

According to data released by Tmap last year, over 19 million drivers participated in the Driving Score program, and more than 10.1 million of them scored well enough to secure insurance discounts. Although similar programs are offered by insurance companies like Progressive and Allstate in the United States, Tmap, along with other South Korean tech giants such as Naver and Kakao, makes this information public, ranking drivers against one another.

“It is one of the few score-based competitions in Korea where everyone benefits when scores rise,” Chun Ji-yeon, senior researcher at the Korea Insurance Research Institute’s mobility center, said. “Safer driving lowers accident risk, insurers save on claims, and drivers save money. It is a rare alignment of interests.”

Tmap claims that their contribution has yielded real results in road safety statistics. According to their internal data, Tmap claims it has prevented 31,336 traffic accidents between 2018 and 2020. Over the years, the South Korean government has made strides to tighten its traffic laws, including the deployment of more speed cameras and tougher drunk driving and school zone speeding laws.

View the 4 images of this gallery on the original article

In addition, cutting-edge safety tech like automatic emergency braking and lane-keeping assist in cars (especially in the ever-popular Hyundai and Kia models in the country) has contributed to the decline. However, Seo Beom-kyu, head of the traffic safety division at the Korea Road Traffic Authority, notes that the apps do something that the government couldn't do by itself.

“Enforcement and better technology are still the main drivers of change in road safety,” he said. “But the private-sector model adds something new. It rewards good behavior, which government programs struggle to do at scale.”

According to government data, the number of traffic accidents in South Korea fell from 223,552 cases in 2014 to 198,296 in 2023. During this time, the number of accidents per 10,000 vehicles decreased from 2.0 to 0.9, while fatalities per 100,000 people declined from 9.4 to 5.0.

Although researchers in the country argue that the motivation to provide such services is purely a marketing and branding scheme for both insurance companies and navigation app providers, for Tmap and similar app users, the benefit is much more than just an insurance discount; it's a flex on social media.

“When I got a perfect 100 [score] last month [on the Tmap application], I posted it online like a medal,” Incheon-based app user Lee Ji-yeon told The Korea Herald. “It made me think more about how I drive, even when no one is watching.”

However, other drivers told the Herald that they found some loopholes.

“If I have to drive in heavy traffic, I switch to Naver so my Tmap score doesn’t drop,” Seoul-based app user Kim Min-su said. “It might sound silly, but last year it saved me almost 200,000 won (~$144) on insurance.”

Final Thoughts

Would such a thing work in the United States? It might be tricky to get off the ground. In recent years, insurance giants such as Allstate and Progressive, as well as auto manufacturers, have faced lawsuits and scrutiny from lawmakers over the handling of drivers' data.

However, in remarks to the Korea Herald, Hyun Chul-seung, the head of the Traffic AI and Big Data Center at the Korea Road Traffic Authority, noted that the "public square" element of these scores and ranking is the sauce that makes Tmap Mobility and the other tech giants' features work, noting that the South Koreans have “a deep familiarity with measurable performance.”

“From school grades to fitness apps to delivery driver ratings, we are used to seeing our performance compared to others,” he said. “Here, it has found a relatively healthy outlet.”

This App Is Making Safe Driving a Fierce Competition Among South Korean Drivers first appeared on Autoblog on Aug 18, 2025

This story was originally reported by Autoblog on Aug 18, 2025, where it first appeared.