Driver behaviour, truck motion and dangerous road locations – Unfolding from emergency braking data

•Some fascinating interactions between drivers, trucks and roads were identified.•Trucks negotiating their assignments were used as probe-vehicles in a pilot study.•Braking and other vehicular data gathered were used in traffic safety assessment.•Braking locations were checked and explored using Google Earth and Street View.•Vehicular data together with virtual exploration data were statistically analysed.

Road vehicles equipped with measurement, computing, data storage and data communication capabilities can be utilised as probe-vehicles. Data received from such vehicles can provide valuable traffic and traffic safety information in respect of the covered routes and the connecting road network. In this study, trucks negotiating their normal daily haulage trips were used as probe-vehicles and the data recording their vehicular emergency events, such as abrupt braking events, detected by their on-board vehicular safety systems were analysed. The motivation for such an analysis is manifold. The aspect emphasized here is that the recorded vehicular emergency actions and events can be seen as surrogate safety events. Some of these surrogate safety events mark traffic incidents and therefore can be used as input by the surrogate safety assessment methodology. Though the vehicular emergency data used herein provides only sparse spatial and temporal coverage of the road network investigated, its analysis led to some interesting findings about interactions between drivers, trucks and roads.