The feasibility of undertaking a naturalistic driving project in New Zealand Peter Baas

Current road safety research tools Police crash data (CAS) Limited by Police: role, resources and reporting Driving simulator studies at Waikato Uni Snapshot in controlled environment Need to understand real life driving behaviours

Examples of possible NDB use in New Zealand  Driver inattention  Driver fatigue  Failure to see other party  Young drivers  Safety of older drivers  Self explaining roads  Link between safety and fuel efficiency  Fleet safety

 Road designs that promote desirable driver behaviour  Changing driver scripts and schema (hierarchy of roads) Self explaining roads

Next stage of SER research MSI (FRST) funded research with instrumented vehicle:  Influence of road environment on speed  Road features that redirect driver attention  Tandem model (Samuel Charlton)

Safety & fuel efficiency  Common driving style: –Anticipating situation ahead –Driving to the conditions –Maintaining a relaxed, calm driving style –Managing speed  35% difference between drivers in amount of fuel used

Alexander Petroleum  Achieved in 3 years: –18% reduction in fuel consumption (l/100km) –50% reduction in incidents –99% reduction in 90km/h speed exception reports from vehicle instrumentation  Four main factors addressed: –Management / leadership –Drivers –Vehicles –Journey

SAFEDNZ  MOT and NZTA driver training scheme  Based on UK govt scheme with proven safety and fuel efficiency benefits  Launched July 2010  284 drivers trained (7.26% fuel saving on day of training) –

SAFEDNZ Senior instructors Reduction in trip time Reduction in fuel use Reduction in gear changes Reduction in brake use Reduction in braking distance Reduction in time spent braking 6.0%4.9%48.2%25.7%38.3%49.8% Standard circuit ~ 35 km long Mix of: urban and rural roads, intersections and different terrains Before and after measurements

Effect on travel time  Fuel savings diminish when driver has to manage fuel and time saving together (Dogan et al 2011)  Drivers speed to keep the boss happy  Small reductions in posted speed limit have minor impact on travel time (Archer, Fotheringham et al 2008, Haworth, Ungers et al 2001)  5 minute difference in travel time but 30% difference in fuel use for 61km journeys in Melbourne (RACV 2000)

Influence of fleet management on safety  Fleets with good safety management systems: have less than ½ the crash rate of those that don’t irrespective of fault  Crash rates halved when safety management systems introduced Based on: –Analysis of the crash rates of 48,000 heavy vehicles in NSW, Queensland and Victoria, half of which were accredited to Trucksafe or NHVAS –US, Australian, Canadian and other studies

NDB tool limitations  Cost: NZ has very small road safety research budget  Large sample sizes often required  Variables measured and equipment required can vary considerably  Data analysis can be complex and time consuming  May be more suited for comparative studies in NZ especially the effectiveness of interventions

Possible equipment options  Most have GPS, video cameras (2 to 6), accelerometers, microphone and event trigger  Range in price from $500 to >$60,000  DriverVisionR by Transecurity (ex 100 car study) about $15,000  Low cost systems ($500 to $1,000) developed for fleet monitoring purposes (e.g. Drive Cam). Promoted by insurance companies.

Key measures for basic system  Camera data  GPS  Lateral and longitudinal acceleration  Speed  Speech (to help identify events)

T-eye ADR3000 trial  Video images acceptable  Unable to identify events from accelerometer (poor resolution)  Generally difficult to identify events. Would require highly trained observers  Driver wore sunglasses most of the time, making it very hard to check if distracted  Looking at trialling SBX3100 device  For Self Explaining Roads research will use Waikato Uni instrumented vehicle.

Summary  NDB tools provide the opportunity to make a major step forward in the understanding how to improve road safety and fuel efficiency  Likely NZ use is for evaluating the effectiveness of interventions because of cost  International collaboration would help