The Shanghai Naturalistic Driving Study

The Shanghai Naturalistic Driving Study (SHNDS) was a collaborative research study conducted by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI), the General Motors Company, and Tongji University. The SHNDS was the first large-scale naturalistic driving study conducted in China using the same data collection system employed in the Second Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP 2). The overall objective of the SHNDS was to evaluate driver behavior, traffic conditions, and traffic safety in Shanghai, China. As the SHNDS driver population was primarily middle-aged, the comparison focused on middle-aged participants from SHRP 2. In addition, as Shanghai is a megacity, and therefore primarily an urban environment, a SHRP 2 data subset from Seattle was also chosen due to the city’s similar urban environment and road network. The comparison was conducted from three perspectives: safety-critical event (SCE) rate, secondary task engagement, and relative risk assessment. The main results show that (1) the rate of SCEs in the SHNDS was much higher than the SCE rate in SHRP 2; (2) the proportion of near-crashes was much higher than the proportion of crashes in the SHNDS; (3) the prevalence of overall distraction was significantly lower in the SHNDS than in the Seattle (middle-aged) and SHRP 2 (middle-aged) datasets; and (4) almost all distractions, including handheld cell use, judgement error, and performance error and impairment, significantly increased driving risk for SHRP 2 (middle-aged) and Seattle drivers, while only judgement error significantly increased driving risk in the SHNDS.