Risk factors, crash causation and everyday driving

Abstract

The UDRIVE Naturalistic Driving Study (NDS) is the first large scale European project to observe driving behaviour directly in the field. Its goal was to identify risky driving behaviour, understand what drivers commonly do (everyday driving), why and when driver’s attention is diverted from the road (distracted driving), focus on power two wheelers (PTW), pedestrians and cyclists as they are road users that are exceptionally exposed to crashes (vulnerable road users; VRU) and learn about the properties of sustainable driving behaviour (eco-driving). One of the advantages of this project is the unique opportunity to observe critical events while they occur, and with the help of the records, go back in time and investigate what may have caused them. Drivers from France (FR), Germany (GE), Poland (PL), Spain (SP), the Netherlands (NL), and the UK volunteered to participate in this study. Mechanics equipped their vehicles with cameras and sensors and thus created a fleet of 200 vehicles. This included 120 cars (FR, GE, PL, NL, and UK), 40 scooters (SP), and 40 trucks (NL). The data was collected in a box, referred to as data acquisition system (DAS), which was installed in the trunk of the vehicles. It recorded videos of seven to eight cameras, CAN, GPS and acceleration data. The data was collected between a time period of 12 to 21 months, accumulating 87 871 hours of data. This deliverable reports the results of normal and risky driving behaviour while the findings of the other research topics will be reported in respective deliverables.