ZenScore: Basics of Understanding Safe Driving and Make Drivers Safer with Coaching

Introduction

A ZenScore (aka safety score) is a way to measure driving risk based on behaviors observed on the road. Rather than relying on user self-feelings based on driving habits, it uses consistent signals from trips to summarize how safely someone drives. The goal is to identify patterns, recognize good driving, and guide smarter, safer habits across drivers.

How a ZenScore Is Calculated

The score is a blend of handful behavior categories into a single number, on a 0-100 scale. The score rises with safe habits and falls with risky patterns. The safety events include:

Core Safety Metrics:

• Harsh events: hard braking, rapid acceleration
• Speeding: time or distance spent above posted limits or safe thresholds
• Night time driving: Especially late night (11 PM to 5 AM)

The above inputs are currently considered for ZenScore calculation. Each behavior is normalized (for example, events per mile) so short and long trips are compared fairly. Telenav has built AI/ML based algorithm over the time and in production with multiple products including mobile and automotive. The model generates weighted factors to reflect risk severity of each safety event. For example, sustained speeding usually counts more than a single firm brake. Time decay is often used so recent behavior influences the score more than older trips. The result: a clear, comparable metric that updates as driving improves. This algorithm is approved by Department of Insurance in multiple states of the USA to detect safe driving habit by the drivers.

Additional Feedback Categories (does not impact score):

• Distraction: phone use while moving, frequent screen interactions. Distraction is detection if the car is moving (more than 5 mile/hour, the phone is unlocked, and the move is also moving). If the phone is mounted and stable, phone unlock will not be counted as a distraction.
• Sharp turn or sharp cornering: We also highlight that but it does not impact the score

Identifying Good Driving

A ZenScore highlights what "good" looks like:

Characteristics of Safe Drivers:

• Consistency over perfection: Drivers who avoid spikes—fewer harsh events, stable speeds—tend to maintain high scores
• Context-aware control: Smooth deceleration into slower zones, maintaining headway, and anticipating traffic signals all boost scoring factors
• Focused attention: Minimal phone interaction and proactive scanning translate to fewer risk flags

Zenlit provides a rank of the users among others. In future, a leaderboard will be created to let users compete for safe driving and earn more tokens.

How Contextual Coaching Elevates Every Driver

Scores alone don't change behavior—coaching does, especially when it's contextual, timely, and actionable. Zenlit plans to introduce coaching in the future.

Coaching Features:

• Just-in-time insights: Trip-level feedback that explains the "where and when" (for example, repeated hard brakes on a specific off-ramp) helps drivers connect cause to effect
• Root-cause framing: "Hard braking due to late merging in construction zone" is more helpful than "3 hard brakes." It points to anticipation, route knowledge, or speed planning
• Personalized goals: Micro-targets like "reduce phone pickups by 30% this week" or "increase average headway by 0.5s on highway segments" drive visible improvement
• Positive reinforcement: Spotlighting clean trips and improved segments builds momentum and keeps attention on what's working—not just what went wrong
• Environmental context: Coaching that considers time of day, weather, traffic, and vehicle load is fairer and more effective, distinguishing unavoidable events from preventable ones

Putting It into Practice

Best Practices for Implementation:

• Share clear scoring criteria and examples so drivers understand the "why"
• Provide timely, trip-specific feedback with maps or moments that matter
• Track a few key behaviors rather than everything at once
• Celebrate improvements, not just high scores

A well-designed ZenScore turns data into direction. Paired with contextual coaching, it helps every driver see what to change, how to change it, and why it matters—building a safer, more confident driving culture.

The Future of Safe Driving

As we continue to develop our coaching features and expand our safety scoring system, we're committed to making every driver safer through data-driven insights and personalized guidance. The ZenScore is just the beginning of a comprehensive approach to road safety that rewards good behavior and helps everyone improve.

Ready to start your journey toward safer driving? Download the Zenlit app and begin earning rewards for your safe driving habits today.