A BrokerTech Ventures 2024 Accelerator startup, Lightship’s aim is to create a safer future using lessons from neuroscience.

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Zechari Tempesta, co-founder of Lightship Neuroscience, didn’t set out to be an insurtech founder. But following a personal tragedy involving road fatalities, Tempesta realized he could help do something about it. According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, in 2022, there were over 42,000 road fatalities in the United States. What if that number could be dramatically reduced? 

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Enter Lightship Neuroscience. Based on over 15 years of pioneering neuroscience work in Major League Baseball, Tempesta and co-founders Dr. Wesley Clapp, and Dr. Brian Miller, developed an insurtech solution aimed toward creating safer roads, by identifying driver-specific risks and providing tailored safety training outside of the vehicle, with the goal to reduce road fatalities. “We did not set out to be an insurtech company, but the more we asked, ‘Who cares about safety and understands risk enough to do something about it,’ the more we were pointed towards the insurance industry,” said Tempesta. 

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Despite the advanced safety technology that currently exists, automobile fatalities persist. “The lion’s share of driving collisions and claims are due to a small population of high-risk drivers,” Tempesta shared. Lightship addresses the gaps in the current technologies available to commercial fleets in order to not only identify a risk, but to provide tailored training to combat the risk. Lightship’s unique solution is a proactive approach to safety – by identifying each individual driver’s safety challenges, proactively safeguarding risk and improving safety engagement, Lightship creates better, safer commercial drivers. 

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According to a study investigating the source of crashes published by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in 2018, over 70% of automobile collisions were caused by poor neurocognitive performance. To address this, Lightship takes a quick baseline of each driver’s individual strengths and weaknesses on a smartphone or tablet then prepares an individualized pathway to safety and success through targeted learning. Everything is administered off of the road and is centered around driver decision-making, hazard recognition, situational awareness, risk perception, and distractibility. The baseline assessment takes 5-15 minutes, is built with road-facing dash camera footage and feels more like an interactive gaming experience, rather than a traditional test. The assessment generates a driver profile that identifies the areas of greatest opportunity for improvement. Then, these priority training areas are used to guide follow-up learning, one-on-one coaching, and behind-the-wheel training to support drivers and mitigate risk. 

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Lightship offers a hyperpersonalized, common-sense approach to driver safety that complements existing solutions and technologies. That said, Lightship still experiences challenges to broad adoption. “Introducing a new technology into an industry rooted in tradition definitely holds its challenges,” Tempesta said. “It took some time, but we have gathered support and identified the right audience.” 

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Since its inception, Lightship has grown via mentorship and pilot opportunities via insurance accelerators including BrokerTech Ventures, the Global Insurance Accelerator, EY’s Nexus Growth Lab, and more. In addition, Lightship has partnered with the University of Iowa to investigate the impact of individual distractibility on driving performance with the goal of creating novel safety interventions to fight distracted driving. 

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The future of Lightship is exciting. Tempesta plans to continue to present The Neuroscience of Safe Driving to safety professionals across the country and partner with fleets, brokers, and managers of group captives to grow the market share of Lightship. They also plan to expand their services to improve driver safety across the commercial spectrum and begin helping younger drivers.

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To learn more about Lightship, interested parties can visit their website or keep up on LinkedIn. To connect with Zechari, feel free to email or connect on LinkedIn. 

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“Driving is still the most dangerous thing that we do everyday,” Tempesta said. Lightship represents a critical step forward in commercial auto safety and insurance innovation. “Help us create a safer future by sharing our story.”

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