Tesla has rolled out Safety Score 2.0 with new factors that will make your driving score more accurate, making insurance rates more aligned with driving behaviors.
Safety Score is an assessment of driving behaviors that can affect your insurance rates. The Safety Score is an estimate of various factors that can determine the likelihood of an accident. An aggregated Safety Score helps drivers learn how they can also be safer on the roads, and they are graded from 0 to 100.
Tesla released the third version of the Safety Score today, being simply labeled as Safety Score 2.0.
Tesla said the new update features two new Safety Factors and updates how driving behaviors are measured. Key changes are listed below:
- Added Excessive Speeding as a new Safety Factor. More time spent driving over 85 mph will lead to a lower Safety Score.
- Added Unbuckled Driving as a new Safety Factor. Time spent driving over 10 mph without buckling the driver’s seatbelt will lead to a lower Safety Score.
- Updated Late Night Driving to be risk weighted based on when you are driving from 10 PM – 4 AM. The impact of late-night driving on your Safety Score will depend on the proportion of time spent driving in each hour from 10 PM – 4 AM. The impact on your Safety Score is now reduced earlier in the night and increased later in the night.
- Updated Hard Braking Safety Factor to exclude braking events that occur when the vehicle detects a yellow traffic light.
The previous release of Safety Score featured visualizations of how specific events during a trip impacted your grade. Late Night Driving was also added as a safety factor, but the new 2.0 update shows there were additional improvements made in an attempt to refine it further. There were also changes made to Autopilot disengagements, hard braking, and Forward Collision Warnings and how they affect the Safety Score.
Tesla first rolled out the Safety Score in September 2021 and used it as a way to incentivize safe driving habits. Initially, with the rollout of the “Request Full Self-Driving” button, Safety Scores of 98 or better were awarded access to the FSD Beta Pool.
The requirements to be added to the pool have been lowered over time.
However, the Safety Score can still affect insurance premiums if an owner utilizes Tesla’s in-house Insurance program. This is only available in select states, however, including Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada, Ohio, Oregon, Texas, Utah, and Virginia.