Telematics Technology and Distracted Driving

Description:  

The mission of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), an operating administration of the Department of Transportation (DOT), is to save lives, prevent injuries and reduce economic costs due to road traffic crashes, through education, research, safety standards and enforcement activity. In 2021, 8% of fatal crashes were distraction-affected crashes, with distracted driving motor vehicle crashes claiming 3,522 lives. Understanding which forms of technology can be used to study distracted driving effectively may help to decrease the number of crashes, injuries, and fatalities. The current project will focus on different forms of data collection, i.e., Naturalistic Driving Studies Data Acquisition Systems (NDS DAS) and smartphone-based telematic apps, analyzing the data collected in terms of accuracy at providing information, resources required for utilizing each technology, and ease of use and distribution (Study 1).  The project will also involve analyzing the data collected using these two technologies in terms of distracted driving engagement according to participant sex and age (which will be analyzed using the current project’s data sets) (Study 2).

This project will include a literature review and scan of technologies that can be used for studying data collection of driver behavior and distracted driving engagement, followed by the naturalistic data collection study involving the two forms of technology.  The data that is collected will be analyzed to compare the two technologies (Study 1) and according to sex and age in a 2 by 2 design (Study 2).  It is anticipated that the design will involve at least one hundred twenty participants and data collection will take place for at least a period of one month (for each participant) to ensure sufficient data is available for examining the relevant behaviors. In addition, this project will have a distribution representative of the community from which the sample is drawn in terms of race and ethnicity. 

• Analyze the different kinds of data collection technologies available for studying distracted driving and driving, in general;
• Use two different approaches, i.e., the NDS DAS and smartphone-based telematics technology, in terms of data collection involving driver behavior and performance, in general, and in terms of distracted driving; 
• Analyze the two forms of technology in terms of driver behavior and performance, in general, and in terms of distracted driving to ascertain accuracy of the smartphone-based telematics technology compared to the NDS DAS (Study 1) for conducting research;
• Analyze the data collected by the two different approaches according to sex and age for distracted driving engagement and related risky behaviors (Study 2); and
• Produce two final reports, a journal article, and datasets (raw and processed, both transferred to NHTSA).