How accurate is accident data in road safety research? An application of vehicle black box data regarding pedestrian-to-taxi accidents in Korea

Recently, the introduction of vehicle black box systems or in-vehicle video event data recorders enables the driver to use the system to collect more accurate crash information such as location, time, and situation at the pre-crash and crash moment, which can be analyzed to find the crash causal factors more accurately. This study presents the vehicle black box system in brief and its application status in Korea. Based on the crash data obtained from the vehicle black box system, this study analyzes the accuracy of the crash data collected from existing road crash data recording method, which has been recorded by police officers based on accident parties' statements or eyewitness's account. The analysis results show that the crash data observed by the existing method have an average of 84.48 m of spatial difference and standard deviation of 157.75 m as well as average 29.05 min of temporal error and standard deviation of 19.24 min. Additionally, the average and standard deviation of crash speed errors were found to be 9.03 km/h and 7.21 km/h, respectively.