Book Description

This report presents the results of an analysis effort undertaken to address the following research question: What sensor(s) can be cost effectively added to vehicles on a wide scale to significantly improve our understanding and modeling of naturalistic near-crash/pre-crash driver performance? Current sensor and computer technology allows for the efficient collection and storage of driver and vehicle performance data on board vehicles. Crash data recorders or black boxes exist today on many vehicles though they are limited in number of recorded parameters and storage capacity. However, their capability is increasing. Recent field operational tests of advanced-technology crash avoidance systems and naturalistic driving data collection efforts have employed comprehensive data acquisition systems to characterize driver and vehicle performance as well as the driving environment. These projects gathered data on driver exposure to various environmental factors and on driver encounters with driving conflicts, near-crashes, and actual crashes. Unfortunately, the in-vehicle data acquisition packages in these projects cost over $10,000 per vehicle. It would be advantageous to build and install a very small, inexpensive package under $1,000 in a vehicle fleet of 5,000 or more. The presence of low-cost near-crash/crash event data recorders (EDRs) on thousands of vehicles would enable a more accurate assessment of safety benefits for intelligent vehicle crash avoidance technologies, and would greatly improve the quality of data in national crash databases such as the National Automotive Sampling System (NASS) Crashworthiness Data System (CDS) and General Estimates System (GES).