An Analysis of Vehicular Telematics and Geo-Location Data to Maximize Road Safety*

In scores of vehicle fleets, telematic tracking systems provide fleet managers with information regarding energy consumption, compliance with safety regulations, and driver performance. For a University’s Facilities Management (FM) Fleet to take the next step towards an elevated Sustainable Fleet accreditation and overall team performance, the management has recognized the importance of safety tracking methods combined with data analytics and a comprehensive systems analysis to aid the reinforcement training and maintenance of safe and sustainable driving practices by fleet drivers. This paper demonstrated an effective method of identifying safety hotspots by analyzing safety surrogate measures, such as harsh braking, harsh cornering and speeding from vehicular telematics data and combining them with their geo-location information to enhance the safety of the University of Virginia’s facilities management vehicles and common drivers in the area. Instances of safety surrogate measure violations were first mapped onto a cluster map and were then normalized and combined to pinpoint which spots on campus were most prone to accidents. We then validated the cluster maps with crash data from both Facilities Management vehicles and the state of Virginia to identify safety hotspots. From the investigations, we considered a list of comprehensive safety countermeasures to address the safety infractions identified at each hot spot. These safety countermeasures were recommended based on their likelihood of reducing safety violations.