Live data from Hacker News

Hard-braking events as indicators of road segment crash risk

research.google

101–110 of 577 posts

Re: Hard-braking events as indicators of road segment crash risk

#101

I got one of those dongles from my insurance company that plugged into the ODB2 port and reported my driving habits. I was a bad driver. It would frequently beep at me to let me know that I had braked too hard. I was mystified. "What should I have done differently," I'd think, as I raged at the objective machine that judged me so. The next time my brother came to visit, he called mom. "Oh, and presidentender is a goo…

On the other hand, at age 20, with very high premiums, I got one of these devices which never beeped except on a few too-short exit ramps on highways in my city. The choice on these exits is to slow down traffic on the highway, or endure a "hard stop" by braking immediately when you are on the ramp, and coming to a full stop at the stop sign.

Just a few of these was enough that my "discount" was only a few dollars. I regret giving Progressive my driving data.

Re: Hard-braking events as indicators of road segment crash risk

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insurance is thinking about hard braking as an indicator of a driver with riskier behaviour. Google is showing that it can also be an indicator of risky road designs. These actually kind of point in opposite directions in terms of the causes of hard braking. The certainly can be used in different ways.

A driver who frequents risky roads is a concern to insurers, just as a driver who has risky behaviors. The cause of hard braking isn’t mutually exclusive: bad driving or bad road design.

Similarly, a road that is frequently travelled by risky drivers is a risky road!

Re: Hard-braking events as indicators of road segment crash risk

#104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay I'm thinking of a very Shenzen kind of gizmo for your car that projects a bright red laser "keep out" box on the road in front of your car which is adjusted in size for your current speed.

I think a lot of people would just consider that a challenge. On the occasion when I am towing our travel trailer, it is really incredible how unsafe that makes other drivers act around me. They will jam themselves in front of me at all costs, with no consideration for physics.

I see this happen to semi trucks on the highway. People interpret big open space as a place to merge. As you say, people have no consideration for why there might be a large space in front of a semi. A 50k lb+ truck hitting the back of a ~4k lb vehicle is not pretty.

Re: Hard-braking events as indicators of road segment crash risk

#105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of people would just consider that a challenge. On the occasion when I am towing our travel trailer, it is really incredible how unsafe that makes other drivers act around me. They will jam themselves in front of me at all costs, with no consideration for physics.

I see this happen to semi trucks on the highway. People interpret big open space as a place to merge. As you say, people have no consideration for why there might be a large space in front of a semi. A 50k lb+ truck hitting the back of a ~4k lb vehicle is not pretty.

See for a truck it could say "DEATH ZONE KEEP CLEAR" which would be accurate. Given that it's projected it could rotate through various languages too.

Re: Hard-braking events as indicators of road segment crash risk

#106
post #2

Nice research. This is fairly well known in insurance circles. Most auto insurers that do telematics consider hard braking the strongest indicator of risk. One of the things that we do at work (Cambridge Mobile Telematics) is build tools to deal with this risk. We have apps that monitor driving and we play a tone to indicate that a hard braking event was detected. Simply letting people know that they had a hard braki…

Insurance is thinking about hard braking as an indicator of a driver with riskier behaviour. Google is showing that it can also be an indicator of risky road designs. These actually kind of point in opposite directions in terms of the causes of hard braking. The certainly can be used in different ways.

They point in opposite directions because they’re not measuring the same things.

Google is measuring where on the road most hard braking events happen.

Insurers measure who is having the most hard braking events.

Re: Hard-braking events as indicators of road segment crash risk

#107
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate the warning myself and I use the app the parent is from. I also suspect I am an outlier in not having an accident in 20 years. It’s this obnoxious audio warning that tells me I had a hard breaking and it’s 9/10 because I stopped at a red light that I would not have made on yellow. And then it sends me tips and reminders about reducing hard breaking events and it’s annoying. I know they have done the analysis b…

The lights should be timed so that you don't have to do that if you are driving the posted speed, but I know that's not always true.

It is not possible to time lights that way over any significant distance in a multi-way fabric of traffic.

Re: Hard-braking events as indicators of road segment crash risk

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay I'm thinking of a very Shenzen kind of gizmo for your car that projects a bright red laser "keep out" box on the road in front of your car which is adjusted in size for your current speed.

We have something like that in eu with road markings. Both for clear weather and fog/rain. They mark some of the lines differently, and tell you how many lines you should have between you and the car in front. I think they were first trialed and then printed in several places.

Cool. But I'm thinking this box floats in front of your car on the road in real time. See you're driving and ahead of you on the road is this box. At night it might interfere with your night vision, might have to workshop that a bit.

Re: Hard-braking events as indicators of road segment crash risk

#109
post #7

[dead]

Ok but where is the public Maps overlay for this? Is it available?

Google is offering this as part of the geospatial platform that they market to governments for huge $$$ so I don't think you are going to get it for free any time soon. Maybe limited access if you have an Earth Engine developer account?

Re: Hard-braking events as indicators of road segment crash risk

#110
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does one not already know that they had a hard braking event? Surely the jamming their foot on the brake pedal and the rapid deceleration would send an even more obvious signal than playing a chime?

Have you used one of these apps before? They capture a lot more than emergency stops, what I would classify as the above normal brake effort but not hard braking. Im sure the data exist to set the cutoff but its a lot more than “jam your foot on the pedal braking”. It’s still out of the norm braking for my style of driver but from what I see on the road, people drive aggressively like this. Especially in the US.

What are these apps or devices? Where can I get one?
Post reply on HN