Temporal perspective on individual driver behavior using electronic records of undesirable events

This paper explores In-Vehicle Data Recorders (IVDRs) information about the count of undesirable driving events (such as hard braking, lane changing, and sharp turning) of 148 individuals. The information was logged over three years and included time stamp information about the occurrence of undesirable driving events in each trip (N = 573,238). The objective was to gain deeper understanding about the heterogeneity among drivers with respect to behavior change over time, the effect of trip duration and the distribution of events count. Our findings show that in some respects drivers are similar: for all drivers, the variance of the events count was larger than the mean, indicating that the negative binomial distribution is suitable to model the distribution of events count per trip. Most drivers (95%) had lower events rate during longer trips, suggesting that a 'simple' events rate index is problematic when comparing between those driving longer trips and drivers driving short trips. In addition, most drivers (87%) improved their driving behavior throughout the measurement period. However, there are important differences among drivers in terms of the frequency of behavior change and the trends in behavior over time. These findings demonstrate the need for personalized examination of individual drivers. Several tools for such personalized examination were developed and discussed in this study.