Analysis of Event Data Recorder Data for Vehicle Safety Improvement

摘要

The Volpe Center performed a comprehensive engineering analysis of Event Data Recorder (EDR) data supplied by NHTSA to assess its accuracy and usefulness in crash reconstruction and improvement of vehicle safety systems. The Volpe Center gathered and analyzed 2,541 EDR files downloaded from the National Automotive Sampling System (NASS), Special Crash Investigations (SCI), and Crash Injury Research & Engineering Network (CIREN) databases supplied by NHTSA. The analyses focused on EDR file format and potential improvements, assessment of crash types where EDR data exists, review of EDR data for accuracy and completeness, EDR data comparisons with existing crash data, review of pre-crash, crash, and post-crash data for usefulness in better understanding the crash reconstruction, identification of error sources, and determination of methods by which researchers could use the EDR data to improve their crash case information. The results of the engineering analysis show that EDR data can objectively report real-world crash data and therefore be a powerful investigative and research tool, by providing very useful information to crash reconstructionists and vehicle safety researchers. Due to significant limitations however, EDR data should always be used in conjunction with other data sources.