Everyday driving: Speeding behaviour

Abstract

In driving school, drivers learn a complex set of rules aiming at minimising the risk of being involved in a crash. Among others, key rules of conduct are driving within legal speed limits, keeping a safe following distance, driving carefully and anticipating the situation, not engaging in secondary tasks such as texting or dialling. Crash statistics and other research show that not following these rules of conducts may lead to crashes as speeding, close following, and distraction have been identified as main causes of crashes. Being caught overstepping rules is unlikely, crashes are rare events as well; therefore, drivers may not receive direct feedback on their action making it more cumbersome to follow the rules. Little is known about the prevalence of these risky behaviours. Questions, such as whether drivers speed on rare occasion or deliberately and whether drivers always follow on close distance, are of research interest as the answers provide information on the prevalence and risk of disregarding safety precautions. In (semi-) controlled experimental settings, participants will not engage in such behaviour, naturalistic driving studies (NDS), on the other hand, provide a setting that lets drivers feel at ease and behave naturally. The NDS administered within the EU project UDRIVE offers the opportunity to investigate the prevalence and risk of disregarding safety precautions. Risky driving behaviours such as speeding and close following distance will be extracted from the data, their prevalence and determined, situational factors added. In addition, driver characteristics will be included in the analysis. Results will provide more insight on how age, gender, annual mileage, certain personality traits affect risky behaviour and what type of situational factors contribute to engaging in risky behaviour. In addition, because data were collected throughout Europe, regional differences can also be analysed. Understanding the prevalence of risky behaviour will allow for proposing countermeasures that will improve road traffic safety.