Press Roundup: Zendrive Bay Area Commute Study Shows Safest Routes to Work

Increasing commute safety is a priority for the Bay Area, not just getting to work as fast as possible.

Media reception to Zendrive’s recent Bay Area Commute Snapshot was widespread. This proves people are hungry for tools to help them stay safe on the roads.

Twenty Bay Area news outlets mentioned covered our inaugural commute safety study. It was mentioned in nine TV spots, all major newspapers and a live radio interview in Spanish.

In case you missed it, we released an interactive map. It shows your commute safety on the 62 roads into and out of San Francisco. We learned a lot in the process of analyzing the data and developing the project. Here are a few of our learnings.

Highlights of the press coverage:

Coverage in all major Bay Area newspapers

• First off, the safety snapshot made the front page of the San Jose Mercury News. “I felt somewhat responsible for some of the negative externalities the mobile revolution has created,” Zendrive CEO Jonathan Matus told the reporter, Erin Baldassari. “There’s one area where smartphones are actually deadly, and that’s on the roads.”
• In addition, the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Francisco Examiner both covered the story.

Local TV Reports Feature Commute Safety

• CNBC worked with Zendrive’s data to arrive at an attention-grabbing headline “Drivers in California’s 3 largest cities wasted $7 billion on gas in 2017.”
• CBS Bay Area’s Anne Makovec featured the study live on air. “If you are a municipality and you want to deploy your law enforcement tools better, or if you want to add a lane or change the roads themselves, this data is super valuable,” Matus said.
• NBC Bay Area covered the story with live footage from Highway 101 and reactions to the findings from Bay Area drivers. “I would definitely take the safer road over the faster route,” one driver said.

Highlighted in Insurance Industry News

The insurance industry also took note of the study. Trade publication Insurance Innovation Reporter wrote, “The study yielded sometimes counter-intuitive insights about local driving risk that are potentially useful for both drivers and insurers and point to more dynamic approaches to underwriting.”

In conclusion, the commute study resonated with insurance leaders and with Bay Area readers, viewers and reporters. This is the first in a series of commute studies on US metro areas. Drop us a note on Twitter (@zendrive) to nominate the next place we focus on for a commute study.

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