What is mindful driving?

The importance of practicing mindfulness while driving

“Mindful” is one of those terms that has as many meanings as the amount of ingredients found on the menu of your favorite smoothie spot. 

There are

academic ways of defining it, but how does mindfulness apply to people like you—with traffic-jammed commutes, packed schedules and not enough sleep?

Do busy people have time for mindfulness?

We think so! To us, mindfulness is an important part of what taking the high road means. For us, it starts with awareness: paying attention to what you’re doing, and what’s around you. For example, noticing the speed limit dropping from 40 mph to 30 mph as you cruise into town, or noticing the road is wet and slowing down. As the bumper sticker, and Ram Dass classic, puts it,

“Be Here Now.”

Mindfulness for us also means being more intentional about our activities—choosing things because they fit our values or who we want to become, rather than doing things out of habit or convenience.

Mindfulness is also being thoughtful about how you’re affecting others. This could be avoiding the anger or aggression you feel when someone cuts you off in traffic or being mindful to give a friendly wave to someone after they’ve let you merge.

The downfall of not being mindful on the road

Mindfulness while driving involves not being distracted or oblivious by multi-tasking or zoning out. Since a lot of driving is routine, we may be able to sneak in a quick text or bite of burrito or let our mind wander, without anything bad happening. But, these small risks can increase and could eventually lead to an accident. Plus, when you multiply this behavior by an entire society, the consequences start to add up.  

So how does this all relate to HiRoad? We’re reinventing insurance to be based on your choices, and a key tool to measure those choices is your smartphone. Unfortunately, smartphones tend to encourage us to multi-task, be distractedand not be mindful. We’ve all had someone almost crash into us on the sidewalk because they were looking at their phone. On the road, we’ve all seen someone texting and driving, wondering if their lack of mindful driving will cause an accident or not.

HiRoad® and promoting mindfulness

One of the first things people notice when they start using HiRoad’s app is that it’s a driving-related app that isn’t meant to be used while you’re driving—and there’s a good reason for that. Being a mindful driver means you’re focusing on the road, not on your phone. So, while you won’t see anything from us that might distract your driving, we will offer tips to review once you’re in a safe place to review them—not behind the wheel.

By showing you how you’re doing relative to distraction-free driving, safe speeds, smooth driving and driving patterns, we hope to draw your attention to different aspects of your driving. To adapt the old business saying, “What gets measured gets minded,” we have created a solution to help you adopt more ways to be mindful while you drive.

At HiRoad, we promote mindfulness through our app. It assesses your driving based on four scores: Distraction Free, Driving Patterns, Safe Speeds and Smooth Driving. A high score? You are driving mindfully. On the other hand, the lower the score, the more room for improvement.

As we continue to build the HiRoad experience and bring mindfulness into your life, we want to know how mindful practices show in other areas of your life?

The information in this article was obtained from various sources not associated with HiRoad®. While we believe it to be reliable and accurate, we do not warrant the accuracy or reliability of the information. HiRoad is not responsible for, and does not endorse or approve, either implicitly or explicitly, the content of any third party sites that might be hyperlinked from this page. The information is not intended to replace manuals, instructions or information provided by a manufacturer or the advice of a qualified professional, or to affect coverage under any applicable insurance policy. These suggestions are not a complete list of every loss control measure. HiRoad makes no guarantees of results from use of this information.