A large-scale, EU-funded study will be looking over the shoulder of motorists and scooter riders in six countries for at least one year in a bid to map a route towards safer, more sustainable road traffic. Recommendations from this project are expected in 2017.

The Udrive project is collecting data from 200 vehicles (lorries, cars and scooters), keeping track of the actions and reactions of the participating motorists as they engage with everyday traffic. “Our objective is to gain insight into real, 'natural' driving behaviour,” says project coordinator Nicole van Nes of the Dutch national institute for road safety research (SWOV).

Natural driving behaviour, she explains, differs significantly from that displayed in contrived situations or on simulators. “It’s not influenced by an experimental or laboratory setting, where you ask drivers to do something specific, like using a particular type of equipment or taking a specific route,” she notes. “In a naturalistic study, the participants’ own vehicles are instrumented to capture the necessary data, and they drive them as usual.”

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