by Stephen Rivers
- Tmap claims its gamified driving scores prevented 31,366 crashes from 2018–2020.
- Millions of Koreans now compete for safer-driving perks tied to insurance discounts.
- Privacy concerns loom, echoing U.S. lawsuits against LexisNexis, GM, and others.
Every major country wants to make its roads safer than they currently are. Some use restrictive laws and hardcore enforcement. Others try to leverage technology in cars themselves. Korea has a new strategy that it believes has prevented over 30,000 crashes. The kicker is that it’s a game, and it has close ties to technology that raises privacy questions.
Tmap, the country’s most widely used navigation application, claims it’s “Driving Score” helped prevent 31,366 accidents between 2018 and 2020. The figure comes from an internal model comparing accident rates of high-score and low-score drivers. While not independently verified, it signals how gamified safety has taken root in Korea.
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According to the Korea Herald, the formula is simple: phones with the app downloaded track acceleration, braking, cornering, and speeding. The smoother the driving, the higher the score. Those points translate to perks like insurance discounts or gift credits. At the end of 2024, Tmap reported 19 million participants, with over 10 million earning rewards.
Rivals have followed suit. Kako Map rolled out it’s own system in 2022, Naver Map in 2024, and even rental platform Socar joined in. Unlike in most nations, these scores are public, integrated into apps Koreans already use daily, and ranked against other drivers so everyone can see where they’re at.
“It is one of the few competitions where everyone benefits when scores rise,” said Chun Ji-yeon, of the Korea Insurance Research Institute. “Safer driving lowers accident risk, insurers save on claims, and drivers save money. It is a rare alignment of interests.”
As with all connected car tech, safety comes with a serious caveat: privacy. Collecting and sharing driving behavior data isn’t unique to Korea. In the US, firms like LexisNexis and automakers like GM have ended up in lawsuits over how driving data collected via similar apps was shared with insurers. Critics warn that what starts as voluntary score-tracking can quickly shift into a broader surveillance system with few safeguards.
Safer roads are a universal goal, and gamified driving seems like it’s nudging drivers towards better habits. At the same time, the cost of that progress, handing over potentially sensitive data, remains an open question. Korea’s experiment shows the promise of carrots over sticks, but also the risks of letting the scoreboard watch a little more closely than folks realize.