Classification of Inter-Urban Highway Drivers’ Resting Behavior for Advanced Driver-Assistance System Technologies using Vehicle Trajectory Data from Car Navigation Systems

Abstract

Fatigue-related crashes, which are mainly caused by drowsy or distracted driving, account for a significant portion of fatal accidents on highways. Smart vehicle technologies can address this issue of road safety to improve the sustainability of transportation systems. Advanced driver-assistance system (ADAS) can aid drowsy drivers by recommending and guiding them to rest locations. Past research shows a significant correlation between driving distance and driver fatigue, which has been actively studied in the analysis of resting behavior. Previous research efforts have mainly relied on survey methods at specific locations, such as rest areas or toll booths. However, such traditional methods, like field surveys, are expensive and often produce biased results, based on sample location and time. This research develops methods to better estimate travel resting behavior by utilizing a large-scale dataset obtained from car navigation systems, which contain 591,103 vehicle trajectories collected over a period of four months in 2014. We propose an algorithm to statistically categorize drivers according to driving distances and their number of rests. The main algorithm combines a statistical hypothesis test and a random sampling method based on the renowned Monte-Carlo simulation technique. We were able to verify that cumulative travel distance shares a significant relationship with one’s resting decisions. Furthermore, this research identifies the resting behavior pattern of drivers based upon their travel distances. Our methodology can be used by sustainable traffic safety operators to their driver guiding strategies criterion using their own data. Not only will our methodology be able to aid sustainable traffic safety operators in constructing their driver guidance strategies criterion using their own data, but it could also be implemented in actual car navigation systems as a mid-term solution. We expect that ADAS combined with the proposed algorithm will contribute to improving traffic safety and to assisting the sustainability of road systems.