City Research Online

Abstract

High-emission private vehicles contribute disproportionately to urban air pollution, which, together with traffic accidents, constitutes a major public health threat and a leading cause of death among young adults. The tension between individual driving habits and collective environmental responsibility highlights the pressing need for strategies promoting safer driving. This paper introduces a novel approach to evaluating road crash risk by using air pollutants as exposure measures, thereby encouraging drivers to reduce both their environmental footprint and mitigate their crash risk. We analyze a dataset of over 1,500 at-fault crash-related claims recorded over two years by an insurance company, merged with detailed telematics driving data for individual vehicles. We show that emission factor models can effectively incorporate emission-based exposure measures into crash risk models. We also provide empirical evidence that incorporating behavioral telematics data allows pollutant-driven models to perform as efficiently as traditional distance-driven models. The approach reported has the potential to enhance road safety and reduce air pollution by directly linking environmentally conscious driving practices with lower road crash risks.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2026 The Author(s). Journal of Risk and Insurance published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Risk and Insurance Association. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.
Publisher Keywords:	air pollution; crash risk; public health; road accident; telematics; transportation
Subjects:	G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GE Environmental Sciences H Social Sciences > HG Finance R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine > RA0421 Public health. Hygiene. Preventive Medicine
Departments:	Bayes Business School Bayes Business School > Faculty of Finance
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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