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.
73 Concluding Remarks The SHRP 2 NDS project represents the largest and most ambi- tious naturalistic driving study conducted to date. One of the key objectives of the project was to collect unique data to enable studies of the role of driver performance and behavior in traf- fic safety and how driver behavior affects the risk of crashes. These studies, just getting under way now, will provide new understanding of how the driver interacts with the vehicle, the traffic environment, roadway characteristics, traffic control devices, and other environmental features. This understand- ing is essential to developing policies and countermeasures to reduce the number and severity of roadway crashes. This final report provides a summary of one of the princi- pal components of the SHRP 2 NDS, namely the Safety Proj- ect S07, In-Vehicle Driving Behavior Field Study. This project successfully collected SHRP 2 NDS data at six study centers located in Bloomington, Indiana; Buffalo, New York; Durham, North Carolina; Seattle, Washington; State College, Pennsyl- vania; and Tampa, Florida. These study centers encompass more than 21,000 sq. mi., contain about 7.6 million registered vehicles of all types, and have a population of approximately 6.5 million people of driving age (>15 years). Under the direction of the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, and with the support of VTTI, teams at each of the six study centers successfully ⢠Identified and contacted more than 16,358 people who expressed some interest in participating in the study. Of these, 3,247 individuals, in targeted demographic age and gender cells, were eventually enrolled as participants in the study. This compares favorably with the goal of enrolling 3,100 to 3,300 participants established at the onset of the program. ⢠Conducted a series of participant assessment tests to establish a baseline in driver functional abilities with regard to percep- tion, cognition, and psychomotor and physical abilities. In addition, participants completed surveys or questionnaires providing psychological information and documentation of health, medical conditions, and medications as well as safe driving knowledge and history. ⢠Performed 3,362 installations of DAS equipment into approximately 35 different makes of participant vehicles. ⢠Maintained and managed the fleet of participants and vehicles for approximately 38 months (i.e., the first instal- lation occurred in October 2010 and the final deinstalla- tion occurred in December 2013). These activities included accessing and swapping SSDs and downloading data to VTTI, investigating crashes involving participants, replac- ing malfunctioning DAS equipment, and deinstalling DAS equipment from the participant vehicles at the end of the study. ⢠Participants reported 188 crash events to the six study cen- ter sites. None of these crashes involved a fatality or a severe injury. This is lower than the number of crashes expected at the beginning of the study and also lower than the num- ber of crashes identified by VTTI through its review of data obtained from the vehicles. Thus, it appears that there were crashes that were not reported by the participants to the study centers. In summary, the S07 program activities at the six study centers have contributed to the collection of a rich set of NDS data. Most of the instrumented vehicle data include information on vehicle speed, acceleration and braking, all vehicle con- trols, lane position, and forward radar (indicating headway distance to objects in front of the vehicle) as well as video views forward, to the rear, and on the driverâs face and hands. The vehicles instrumented by the study centers traveled 49,657,037 miles during 6,650,519 trips of which an esti- mated 5,400,000 trips (81%) were made by consented par- ticipants (based on driver ID) and are available to researchers (VTTI 2014). At the beginning of the program, a target of 3,900 data-years in the field was established. The six study centers obtained 3,905 data-years in the field, or 100.1% of the goal. In closing, many participants were sad to see the study end. They enjoyed participating in the study and expressed interest in participating in any follow-up studies. This bodes well for the future of naturalistic studies. C h A P t E R 5
