FMCSA outlines future naturalistic driving research
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration intends to conduct additional naturalistic driving studies that will yield valuable in-cab data on commercial motor vehicle operations, FMCSA Deputy Administrator Bill Bronrott said Sept. 1.
In a statement (.pdf file) made at a symposium on naturalistic driving studies, Bronrott said studies such as the Large Truck Crash Causation Study have allowed FMCSA to analyze the influence of driver behavior in crashes and develop crash countermeasures. The agency will conduct more naturalistic studies on fatigue management and driver health and wellness. FMCSA also plans to conduct a $3.5 million field operational test and naturalistic driving data collection on 270 commercial trucks from three different motor carriers. Data will be collected for 18 months and is expected to yield about 40 million miles of driving data, which would be the largest naturalistic driving database of CMV operations ever collected.
Naturalistic studies involve observing and recording drivers' behavior while they operate vehicles in their daily lives for an extended period of time.
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