The potential to continuously measure performance is imminently available to vehicle drivers. Suites of sensors are becoming increasingly commonplace in production vehicles; their development and assessment is integral to research programs such as the United States Department of Transportation's (USDOT's) Intelligent Vehicle Initiative, the Japanese Smart Cruise 21 program, and the European Commission's Fifth Framework initiative eEurope 2002. The common goal of such programs is to explore the merits and acceptability of increasing levels of driver assistance. The purpose of this paper is to highlight an approach to the inattention/judgment issues. Both inattention and bad judgment contain a spectrum of behavior from barely acceptable to downright criminal. All inattention and all bad judgments increase the risk of property damage, injury and death. The lowest vulnerability comes with true defensive driving, a learned skill that depends on the driver's continuing awareness and motivation. It seems possible that self-monitoring by drivers could contribute to curbing unsafe behavior. Much risky driving has some element of inattention, lack of awareness, and/or can be associated with a distraction. Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) technology advances have made it possible to sense, interpret, and record continuous detailed information about the vehicle-driver safety performance. The premise is that using this information in some composite measure that can be fed back to the driver in a simple direct and continuous form would help improve the overall level of highway safety. Some elements of such a measure might be relative speed, divergence from the lane centerline, and the necessary deceleration to avoid a crash.
Abstract