Massive transportation study to record habits of drivers

Massive transportation study to record habits of drivers
By Cliff White - Centre Daily News
Sept. 30, 2011

FERGUSON TOWNSHIP — For hundreds of Centre County drivers, the cameras will always be watching.

A study being performed by the Transportation Research Board, in conjunction with Penn State, is equipping up to 240 local cars with an arsenal of cameras and other data collection devices as part of the largest coordinated safety program ever undertaken in the U.S.

The Second Strategic Highway Research Program was created by Congress to investigate the underlying causes of highway crashes and congestion on the country’s roads. When completed, the two-year, $180 million Naturalistic Driving Study will have collected the equivalent of 2,000 driving years of data

from thousands of participants in Centre County, Buffalo, N.Y., Bloomington, Ind., Durham, N.C., Tampa, Fla., and Seattle.

“The study will ensure decisions on matters of transportation are made based on mathematical models rather than educated guesses, like it has in past years,” said Penn State civil engineering professor Paul Jovanis, the principal researcher for the local portion of the project.

On Thursday morning, Jovanis and the rest of the eight-person State College team, composed of professors, researchers and graduate students associated with Penn State’s Thomas D. Larson Pennsylvania Transportation Institute, outfitted a powder blue Hyundai sedan with five cameras, an accelerometer, a gyroscope and a toolbox full of other gadgets and gizmos. The high-tech equipment will be used to track the driver’s every move, including an eye that wanders off the road and an unsure foot that hesitates before slamming on the brakes.

It will also record how fast the car was traveling, whether the driver was wearing a seat belt, the condition of the road and the location of every accident, major or minor.

For the first few weeks after the cameras are installed, Jovanis said, drivers are cautious and modify their behavior. But they soon revert to their pre-surveillance driving behavior, bad habits and all, studies have shown.

The data, containing the unsparing details of every aggressive merge, inattentive swerve and jarring fender- bender, is uploaded every one-tenth of a second via a wireless router installed in the car, and is backed up on a hard drive kept inside the car. Combined with the results of a three-hour physiological and psychological exam taken by the driver, the data will be used to study transportation from academic perspectives ranging from psychology to economics.

“It’s the most comprehensive transportation study ever done,” Jovanis said.

Jovanis made assurances the data being collected is “extremely secure,” as it’s encrypted before it’s transmitted. Since each driver in the study is identified by a code, and not by name, the data would be difficult to use in a lawsuit against a participant resulting from an accident, Jovanis said.

In return, drivers receive $500 per year for one or two years, and are entered into a $1,000 raffle held every six months. But most participants have volunteered for the sake of science, said Janet Fraser, who coordinates the project’s assessments.

“They’ve been incredibly patient and understanding. Not one has turned down taking any portion of our testing, even though it’s all optional,” she said.

The study began in February and will run through March 2013. About 70 cars have already undergone retrofits for the study, with appointments scheduled for dozens more. The program is still recruiting drivers, mainly from younger and older age brackets. To learn more about the study or to apply, visit www.drivingstudy.org.

Read more: http://www.centredaily.com/2011/09/30/2933272/massive-transportation-study-to.html#ixzz1ZSPC956x