Speeding in urban environments: Are the time savings worth the risk?
Stephen Greaves2015, Accident Analysis & Prevention
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Abstract
Perceived time savings by travelling faster is often cited as a motivation for drivers' speeding behaviour. These time savings, however, come at a cost of significant road injuries and fatalities. While it is known that drivers tend to overestimate the time savings attributable to speeding there is little empirical evidence on how much time drivers genuinely save during day-to-day urban driving and how this relates to speeding-related crashes. The current paper reports on a study to address the lack of empirical evidence on this issue using naturalistic driving data collected from 106 drivers over a period of five weeks. The results show that the average driver saves 26 seconds per day or two minutes per week by speeding. More importantly, the cost of these time savings is one fatality for every 18,947 hours saved by the population on 100 km/h roads and one injury for every 1,407 hours saved on the same roads. Full speed compliance -and consequently a dramatic reduction in the road toll -could be achieved through almost imperceptible increases in travel time by each driver.
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This is volume one of a three-volume report. It contains the results of a study that examined the speeding behavior of drivers in their own vehicles over the course of three to four weeks of naturalistic driving in urban (Seattle, Washington) and rural (College Station, Texas) settings. The purpose of this research was to (1) identify the reasons why drivers speed, (2) model the relative roles of situational, demographic, and personality factors in predicting travel speeds, (3) classify speeders, and (4) identify interventions, countermeasures, and strategies for reducing speeding behaviors. Data collected from 164 drivers included 1-Hz recordings of vehicle position and speed using a global positioning system (GPS) receiver, responses to personal inventory questionnaires, and daily driving logs that captured trip-specific situational factors. Vehicle speed and position data were combined with road network data containing validated posted speed information to identify speeding episo...
Motivations for Speeding, Volume II: Findings Report
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This is Volume II of a three-volume report. It contains the results of a study that examined the speeding behavior of drivers in their own vehicles over the course of three to four weeks of naturalistic driving in urban (Seattle, Washington) and rural (College Station, Texas) settings. The purpose of this research was to (1) identify the reasons why drivers speed, (2) model the relative roles of situational, demographic, and personality factors in predicting travel speeds, (3) classify speeders, and (4) identify interventions/countermeasures and strategies for reducing speeding behaviors. Data collected from 164 drivers included 1-Hz recordings of vehicle position and speed using global positioning system (GPS) receivers, responses to a battery of a personal inventory questionnaires, and daily driving logs that captured trip-specific situational factors. Vehicle speed and position data were combined with road network data containing validated posted speed information to identify spe...
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