Co-operative ITS: Smartphone based Measurement Systems for Road Safety Assessment

Co-operative Intelligent Transportation Systems (C-ITS) are attracting a lot of attention, and many resources are devoted to the development of new platforms integrating vehicle-to-vehicle (V2 V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communications. The main goal of these systems is to improve safety level on the road networks through a new intelligent services available on-board supporting smarter driving. Due to the rapid growth of smartphone technology and smartphone worldwide sales, C-ITS may have a great contribution from its applications in vehicles data collection. Worldwide sales of smartphones totaled 968 million units in 2013, according to Gartner Inc., exceeding annual sales of feature phones for the first time. This study presents a new co-operative systems based on a client/server platform in which client units are GPS-enabled smartphones capable to acquire individual vehicle's kinematics to be shared on a web server for road operators and users analysis. The cooperative system allows drivers to watch detailed information about their individual driving style and global statistics on their trips. On the other hand, road operators can analyze the whole database to highlight critical points on the network (where unsafe behaviors occur more frequently) and to reward users with safer driving style. This study underscores the usefulness of the smartphone technology for improving C-ITS and assessing potential safety problems.