Objective
U-DRIVE is the first large-scale European Naturalistic Driving Study on cars, trucks and powered two-wheelers. It has two main objectives:
-
To identify well founded and tailored measures to improve road safety and to prevent the collision.
-
To identify approaches for reducing harmful emissions and fuel consumption to make road traffic more sustainable.
Description
Udrive stands for “European naturalistic Driving and Riding for Infrastructure & Vehicle safety and Environment”. Naturalistic driving can be defined as a study undertaken to provide insight into driver behavior during everyday trips by recording details of the driver, the vehicle and the surroundings through unobtrusive data gathering equipment and without experimental control. Data collection will take place in 7 European Member States. Road User Behaviour is studied with a focus on both safety and environment. The project is a 4-year large-scale integrating project, funded under the 7th EU Framework Programme. It started in 2012 and will end in 2017.
Although there is a wealth of research on driver behavior obtained in laboratory and simulator studies, there is a lack of understanding of what happens on the road in everyday traffic situations. Naturalistic Driving (ND) studies are considered most appropriate as this method provides insight into the actual real-world behavior of road users, unaffected by experimental conditions and related biases.
Inputs
Main INPUTS for this project are:
-
Recruitment of drivers/riders and vehicles (passenger cars, powered-two wheelers, and trucks).
-
Data acquisition system (DAS) will be used with data recording including geographic information system (GIS) data and at least two video cameras, one with forward view, the other with a view of the driver.​
Outputs
Main OUTPUTS of this project are:
-
Providing recommendations for safety and sustainability measures related to regulation, enforcement, driver awareness, driver training, and road design.
-
Assessing the options for and usefulness of low tech data acquisition equipment for monitoring performance indicators and effects of policy measures.
-
Improving driver behavior models and risk functions which can be used for traffic simulations.
-
Demonstrating how ND data can be used for commercial purposes, including safety and sustainability applications, behavior-based programmes and business models for future data collection.
Project Assets
A huge amount of data is collected from 6 different European countries which will be accessible for additional analyses of:
-
Driver’s behavior and his psychological driving pattern.
-
Data can also be used to analyze pedestrian’s behavior.
Not only to the partner institutes of UDRIVE, but also to other parties, obviously within legal and ethical limitations.
Project Struggles
As per the site, U-drive is still collecting data from different Eu countries. Total 90,000 hours of driving has been collected and analyzing this data and finding out the root cause is the major struggle.
Project Processes
The U-DRIVE project follows the steps of the FESTA-V methodology, which was originally designed for Field Operational Tests. On the Operation Sites, participants will be recruited and their vehicles will be instrumented with the DAS. They will drive and ride with this equipment for 21 months, and their data will be gathered. The operations at the sites are coordinated and the way in which participants are briefed and data are collected will be the same at all sites (except for differences related to the type of vehicle). This will ensure that UDRIVE functions as one study at multiple locations instead of seven different studies, and will make data comparable and complementary.
SP1: Study design
SP1 will develop and define the overall design of the ND study and make the required legal and ethical arrangements which will include main research questions, the procedure for data collection and complying with legal regulations.
SP2: Data management
SP2 provides all the tools for collecting data in the field, pre-processing them, uploading the data to storage and database, maintaining them and providing them to the analyze while keeping them consistent at the same time.
SP3 Data collection
A central task in UDRIVE is the collection of the actual data in SP3. Data collection will take place in six EU Member States (Spain, France, Germany, Poland, UK, Netherlands).The choice of operation sites was motivated by aiming at having a good spread over countries with different characteristics in terms of road safety records, road user behaviour, road infrastructure characteristics, the presence of vulnerable road users, climate, traffic density, etc.
SP4 Data analysis
U-DRIVE will gather a huge amount of data on everyday driving and riding. Data analysis within SP4 will focus on a limited number of specific areas, based on the research questions as defined in SP1. These areas are:
-
crash causation, crash risk and normal driving
-
distraction and inattention
-
vulnerable road users
-
driving styles related to eco-driving
SP5: Impact(OUTPUT)
SP5 focuses on the outputs of the project mentioned by implementing them in some very specific areas.
SP6: Project Management and dissemination
SP6 will deal with overall project management, including the financial and administrative administration, contacts with the EC, and monitoring project progress.
Project Status
Total 84981 hours of data have been collected and analyzed in the duration of 18 months
Project Consortium member(s)
-
SWOV Institute for Road Safety Research.
-
BASt - Federal Highway Research Institute
-
CDV (Transport Research Centre)
-
CEESAR
-
DLR
-
ERTICO
-
FIA
-
IFSTTAR
-
KFV
-
LAB
-
SAFER
-
TNO
-
VOLVO
-
ITS UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS
-
YAROK
-
CHEMNITZ UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY
-
VOLVO
-
Road and Bridge Research Institute
Contact
Maxime Flament
Head of Connected & Automated Driving at ERTICO
m.flament@mail.ertico.com