The motorcycling season is nearly upon us. After an exceptionally tragic year last year, when 30 drivers of two-wheeled vehicles lost their lives, Zavarovalnica Triglav today held an ‘Anatomy of Motorcycling’ event, together with a panel of guests, to put the spotlight on some of the figures being made public for the first time. The DRAJV app, which is used by more than 3,000 motorcyclists, has given us new insights into the current habits and behaviour of motorcyclists on Slovenian roads. In the last four years, these 3,000 motorcyclists have made over 400,000 journeys and clocked up more than 10 million kilometres. This is the largest dataset on motorcycling so far produced in Slovenia, and will provide us with a more precise understanding of the risks, the behavioural patterns and the background to those key moments when a journey by motorcycle becomes a dangerous one.
“Figures from the DRAJV app show that our users are extremely safe drivers who score an average of 97 out of 100 when driving,” says Boštjan Kop, head of development for the DRAJV app at Zavarovalnica Triglav. “Further analysis can also help us better understand where and when risky events can and do occur. Sections where we see the highest speeds, sudden accelerations, sudden braking or sudden turns are also those where (the most serious) accidents involving motorcyclists take place. These insights are so crucial to efforts to improve road safety because the data is available to everyone on the DRAJV map,” he adds.
Who drives the most dynamically?
Driving analyses tend to show an interesting pattern. That the riskiest driving is by young people – but also by the elderly, which comes as somewhat of a surprise. While the most “dynamic” are motorcyclists in the 20–24 age group, as reflected in the fact that they tend to accelerate, brake and take corners at speed in higher numbers than others, drivers aged between 70 and 74 are also among the most risk-taking motorcyclists on the road, particularly when it comes to accelerating. As motorcyclists get older, and from the age of 24 or so, their riding style changes – generally speaking, they calm down and ride more carefully. As the app shows us, the average score per ride increases with age.
Speeding most common on regional roads
Since 2022 the DRAJV app has tracked more than a million events connected with driving safety, including:
- Speeding – more than 700,000 cases, the majority on regional roads
- Sudden braking – approx. 217,000 cases
- Increased speed when cornering – approx. 92,000 cases
- Sudden acceleration – approx. 87,000 cases
In the summer months, motorcyclists drive on urban roads more often, although regional roads are where speed limits are broken most often and year-round.
The DRAJV data also revealed another interesting trend:
- that the youngest motorcyclists, i.e. those aged between 15 and 19, are best at adhering to the speed limits,
- followed by those aged 65 and over (which shows that maturity and experience bring greater caution).
- The youngest and oldest motorcyclists also have among the highest average DRAJV app scores.
Safety starts with care and concentration – and an understanding of your own behaviour
DRAJV data is an important tool for enabling drivers and riders to make safer and more careful decisions when they take to the road again.
“One of the most important rules of safe driving is provided by this simple message: where you’re looking is where you’re going,” says Andrej Brglez, motorcycling instructor, developer and sustainable mobility researcher. “But there is something else we can say today – that is, if we look closely at the DRAJV app data for motorcyclists, we can either simply predict that new accidents will happen, or look ahead and do something that prevents those accidents from happening, as we know where those accidents have the greatest potential to occur.”
Concentration has its limits
Jan Jolič, air traffic controller and motorcyclist of many years’ standing, cannot afford to make mistakes at work. Concentration is vital to him, but he stresses that it does have its limits, which is why he constantly has to train it. “As an air traffic controller, I’m used to making decisions based on data and on monitoring what’s happening around me,” he says. “It’s the same with motorcycling – there as well, safety is not a question of feeling, but an awareness of what will happen a few seconds before it does. Workshops, motoring schools, training programmes and tools such as the DRAJV app all enable motorcyclists to examine their riding through data and become safer road users.”
At today’s event, Slovenia’s biggest insurer added to its figures and explanations the chance for participants to test the data from the DRAJV app in the field and at first hand. Some set off on their motorcycles along a preset route around Cerklje na Gorenjskem, while others followed them in support vehicles, with a professional commentator providing live commentary on critical points on the route, and on road hazards and patterns of driving behaviour. Visitors could also try out a motorcycling simulator (Moto GP), which most definitely showed that there was no room for error on a motorcycle, especially at high speeds.
One of the first motorcyclists on the route was Tara Zupančič, who also moderated the event. “We motorcyclists live for this feeling of freedom – but we also need to understand how quickly that freedom can turn into danger. DRAJV helps us see how we really drive.”
