Development of a method for detecting jerks in safety critical events.

A new method for detecting jerks in safety critical events, based on the characteristics of the braking caused by the driver in time critical situations, has been developed and evaluated in a small pilot test and also applied on a naturalistic driving study. A portable event data recorder, capable of measuring and recording acceleration profiles for a predetermined time period before and after the safety critical situation, has also been developed to ensure high data quality used to evaluate the proposed method. Thus, an analysis of the acceleration profile is possible during the entire braking event. The study involves analyses of acceleration profiles and different characteristics of the rate of change of the acceleration profiles, i.e. jerks, such as negative jerk, used in previous studies, and a peak-to-peak value of the jerk. The finding is that the proposed method provides a more distinct difference between critical and potentially critical events and thus may be an appropriate method used to detect safety critical events.