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5Introduction and Background The second Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP 2) targeted specific goals in four focus areas, one of which was Safety and, in particular, the role of human behavior in traffic safety. The key objective of the Safety focus area was to identify and research the most pressing issues that currently lead to the unacceptably high number of traffic deaths and injuries on the nationâs roadways. Toward that end, and under the guidance of the Transportation Research Board (TRB) and the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), SHRP 2 initiated and executed an ambitious naturalistic driving study (NDS) during which 3,362 private vehicles, all driven by volunteers from the gen- eral public, were instrumented and deployed on the nationâs roadways over a period of 3 years. The vehicles were fitted with discrete cameras, radar, and other sensors to capture data as their drivers went about their usual driving tasks (VTTI 2014). Data from 6,650,519 trips totaling 49,657,037 miles were collected; of that an estimated 5.4 million trips (81%) were driven by consented drivers (based on driver ID). Previous experience has shown that most drivers quickly forget the presence of the cameras and sensors (Dingus et al. 2006). Thus, researchers using the NDS data will be able to study driving behavior in a natural context. This context will be further enhanced by the detailed data on roadway characteristics and traffic control devices (collected under a separate SHRP 2 project), which will link to the driver trip data. The key premise of the NDS is that a better understanding of safety issues can be acquired by conducting research focused on the driver and how the driver interacts with the vehicle, the roadway, traffic, and traffic controls under a variety of real-world weather and environmental conditions. The key goal is to identify differences in crash risk associated with the driver interactions and, ultimately, to develop data-driven countermeasures that will significantly reduce crash risk. This report describes the activities of six organizations at six different study centers as these organizations recruited participants, conducted driver assessments, installed (and maintained) the instrumentation, and periodically down- loaded the data from the 3,362 vehicles in the NDS fleet. The original study design defined by SHRP 2 stipulated the number of drivers to be recruited in each of eight age groups at each site. This was done to ensure that the total study population had the desired distribution of age and gender demographics. The actual distribution differed somewhat from the original plan but still achieves the study goals. Activities at the six study centers were initiated in a staggered fashion; this greatly ben- efited the program because start-up issues and problems that occurred at the first study center were resolved at that location and the lessons learned were shared with the other sites before their activation. This report is organized as follows: Chapter 2 describes the six study center areas in terms of geographic location (and extent) and provides an overview of the study design. Chap- ter 3 summarizes the major project tasks and the performance achieved in each. Topics covered include Institutional Review Board (IRB) activities, recruiting, the consent and assessment process, installations, participant management and fleet main- tenance (including crash investigations), and deinstallations. Chapter 4 summarizes issues encountered and lessons learned, and Chapter 5 provides concluding remarks. C h A P t E R 1
