Managing the safety of high-risk drivers with vehicle-based safety monitoring

Abstract

Managing the safety of high-risk drivers continues to be a major challenge. The traditional approach has been to develop training and education based programs in order to achieve this. Relatively few of these types of road safety education programs have been evaluated and for those that have included effective evaluation the results have been disappointing in terms of reducing the subsequent crash risk of participants. Some interventions have even been shown to increase the crash risk of drivers (McKenna, F.P., 2010). A recent development in driver behavior management is vehicle-based safety monitoring technology, the motor vehicle equivalent of the "black box" in aircraft that records data on driver behavior from a variety of sources (Horrey et al., 2012). Recent research in the use of driver monitoring has identified key behaviors of high risk drivers (Klauer et al., 2009) and has demonstrated how it can be utilized to manage those behaviors and reduce crash risk (Horrey et al., 2012). This new technology enables intervention models that are more focused on the specific risky driving behaviors of individual drivers. Programs for high-risk drivers (e.g. traffic offenders, young drivers) should involve the systematic long term monitoring and coaching/counseling of the individual driver. The success of this type of intervention model has already been demonstrated by the widely adopted alcohol interlock programs for drink driving offenders (Casanova-Powell et al., 2015). A key component of alcohol interlock programs is that they are included in driver licensing legislation. To be effective, vehicle-based safety monitoring technology also needs to be included in driver licensing legislation. This legislation should require the use of safety monitoring in a variety of areas including as part of graduated driver license systems, fleet management systems and for traffic offenders.