Design of the In-Vehicle Driving Behavior and Crash Risk Study

This document is drawn from the final report prepared by researchers for project S05. The objective of this project was to design the in-vehicle driving behavior and crash risk study, also known as the SHRP 2 naturalistic driving study (NDS), which will collect real-world driving behavior for a two-year period beginning in 2010. The SHRP 2 NDS represents a large-scale effort to collect data to better understand how drivers interact with and adapt to an extensive array of factors (e.g., the vehicle, traffic environment, roadway characteristics, traffic control devices, and the natural environment), and assess the differences in collision risk associated with each of these factors and interactions. By understanding how risk factors influence safety on our roadways, innovative countermeasures can be employed to improve our ability to design and build safer roadways and vehicles, navigate difficult environmental conditions, and teach future generations how to engage in safer driving practices. This project brief summarizes the study design, the data collection effort, issues involving participant protection and data management, and data access policies.