Abstract
Economic globalization and the internet economy have resulted in a dramatic increase in freight transportation. Traffic crashes involving trucks usually result in severe losses and casualties. The fatality and injury rates for heavy truck accidents have been 10 times higher than for sedans in Taiwan in recent years. Thus, understanding driving behavior and risk are important for freight carriers. Since personality traits may result in different driving behaviors, the main objective of this study is to apply artificial neural network (ANN) models to predict the frequency of aberrant driving behavior and the risk level of each driver according to drivers' personality traits. In this case study, relevant information on truck drivers' personality traits and their tendency to engage in aberrant driving behavior are collected by using respectively a questionnaire and a fleet surveillance system from a truck company. A relative risk level evaluation mechanism is developed considering the frequency and distribution of aberrant driving behavior. The Jenks natural breaks optimization method and the elbow method are adopted to optimally classify 40 truck drivers into 4 aberrant driving behavior levels and 5 driving risk levels. It was found that 5% of drivers were at the highest aberrant driving behavior level, and 7.5% of drivers were at the highest driving risk level. Based on the results, the proposed models show good and stable predictive performance, especially for the class of drivers with excessive rotation speed, hard acceleration, excessive rotation speed, hard deceleration, and driving risk. With the proposed models, the predictive class for aberrant driving behavior and driving risk can be determined by plugging in a driver's personality traits before or after employment. Based on the prediction results, the manager of a transportation company could plan the training program for each driver to reduce the aberrant driving behavior occurrence.