Influence of distracted driving of online car-hailing drivers on overall driving performance

Abstract

The distraction affects driving performance and induces serious safety issues. To better understand distracted driving, this study examines the influence of distracted driving on overall driving performance. This paper analyzes the distraction behavior (mobile phone use, entertainment activities, and passenger interference) under three driving tasks. The statistical results show that viewing or sending messages is common during driving. Smoking, phone calls, and talking to passengers are evident in cruising, ride request and drop-off, respectively. Then, overall driving performance is proposed based on velocity, longitudinal acceleration (longacc) and yaw_rate. It is divided into three categories, high, medium, and low, by k-means algorithms. The average speed increases from low to high performance; however, the longacc and yaw_rate decrease. Finally, the influence of distracted driving on overall driving performance is analyzed using C4.5 algorithm. The result shows that when time is peak, the probability of high performance (HP) is higher than off-peak. The possibility of HP increases with the increase of duration; the number of, talking to passengers, listening to music or radio, eating; the duration of, viewing or sending messages, phone calls; but reduces with the increase of the number of phone calls. These findings provide theoretical support for driving performance evaluation.

Keywords:

• Distracted driving
• overall driving performance
• online car-hailing
• k-means algorithm
• C4.5 algorithm

Author contributions

Qianqian Pang: Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation, Formal analysis, Resources, Supervision, Project administration, Writing - review & editing. Shuyan Chen: Methodology, Software, Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Data curation, Writing - original draft, Visualization. Yongfeng Ma: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing - review & editing. Fengxiang Qiao: Conceptualization, Investigation, Writing - review & editing. Yi Zhu: Conceptualization, Writing - review & editing.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The research is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (52172342).