Using Naturalistic Driving Data to Assess Vehicle-to-Vehicle Crashes Involving Fleet Drivers
Objective, detailed and accurate data is critically important in the effort to determine the causes and contributing factors of crashes. In the past, the only way to obtain such information for a large number of crashes was to use data collected from police reports. While information gathered this way is helpful, it has many limitations.
In this study, we conducted the first-ever large-scale examination of naturalistic crash data. Other naturalistic studies have investigated only a small number of crashes or used near crashes as a proxy for real crashes. In contrast, this project examined hundreds of actual crashes from a naturalistic driving database. The data allowed us to examine behaviors and potential contributing factors in the seconds leading up to the collision, and provided information not available in police reports.
