Kevin McDonnell

The increasing accessibility of mobility datasets has enabled research in green mobility, road safety, vehicular automation, and transportation planning and optimization. Many stakeholders have leveraged vehicular datasets to study conventional driving characteristics and self-driving tasks. Notably, many of these datasets have been made publicly available, fostering collaboration, scientific comparability, and replication. As these datasets encompass several study domains and contain distinctive characteristics, selecting the appropriate dataset to investigate driving aspects might be challenging. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper that performs a systematic review of a substantial number of vehicular datasets covering various automation levels. In total, 103 datasets have been reviewed, 35 of which focused on naturalistic driving, and 68 on self-driving tasks. The paper gives researchers the possibility of analyzing the datasets’ principal characteristics and their study domains. Most naturalistic datasets have been centered on road safety and driver behavior, although transportation planning and eco-driving have also been studied. Furthermore, datasets for autonomous driving have been analyzed according to their target self-driving tasks. A particular focus has been placed on data-driven risk assessment for the vehicular ecosystem. It is observed that there exists a lack of relevant publicly available datasets that challenge the creation of new risk assessment models for semi- and fully automated vehicles. Therefore, this paper conducts a gap analysis to identify possible approaches using existing datasets and, additionally, a set of relevant vehicular data fields that could be incorporated in future data collection campaigns to address the challenge.

A telematics device is a vehicle instrument that comes preinstalled by the vehicle manufacturer or can be added later. The device records information about driving behavior, including speed, acceleration, and turning force. When connected to vehicle computers, the device can also provide additional information regarding the mechanical usage and condition of the vehicle. All of this information can be transmitted to a central database via mobile networks. The information provided has led to new services such as Usage Based Insurance (UBI). A range of consultants, industry commentators and academics have produced an abundance of projections on how telematics information will allow the introduction of services from personalized insurance, bespoke entertainment and advertise and vehicle energy optimization, particularly for Electric Vehicles (EVs). In this paper we examine these potential services against a backdrop of nascent regulatory limitations and against the technical capacity of the devices. Using a case study approach, we examine three applications that can use telematics information. We find that the expectations of service providers will be significantly tempered by regulatory and technical hurdles. In our discussion we detail these limitations and suggest a more realistic rollout of ancillary services.