Below is the uncorrected machine-read text of this chapter, intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text of each book. Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.
C H A P T E R 7 ConclusionsThis final report provides a summary of the key areas of the plan that has been developed in support of the SHRP 2 NDS that focuses on Safety Project S06 (Technical Coordination and Independent Quality Assurance for Field Study) and Safety Project S07 (In-Vehicle Driving Behavior Field Study). Preventing or reducing the severity of highway crashes by understanding driver behavior is important to the nationâs economic system and quality of life. The SHRP 2 NDS prom- ises to yield high payoffs in the safety arena, both during the life of the current project and for many years after it is completed, as it facilitates the answering of many of the key research ques- tions identified in the early phases of the project. By under- standing how risk factors influence safety on our roadways, innovative countermeasures can be employed to improve our ability to design and build safer roadways and vehicles, navigate environmental conditions, and teach future driving genera- tions how to use safer driving practices. The SHRP 2 NDS will contribute to these ends by generating a wealth of naturalistic31driving dataâon the order of approximately 60 to 80 million miles and approximately 1.5 to 1.7 million hours of driving data originating from six different regions around the con- tinental United States. During the course of the study, it is expected that detailed information about approximately 1,000 crashes of all severity levels, many of them serious, will be captured. In addition, it is also expected that an order of magnitude more near crashes will be detected and recorded. The naturalistic method is the only way to consistently record the details of many crashes. It is also the only method that allows identification and detailed examination of near crashes. Finally, it provides the exposure data by which metrics of relative risk can be estimated. This undertaking is ambitious; however, this S05 project has developed a comprehensive study design addressing the data collection system as well as the project management and qual- ity plans to successfully address the challenges of this impor- tant national safety program.