Advancing crash investigation with connected and automated vehicle data

This project will investigate how the potentially rich dataset available to connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) can be leveraged to improve crash investigations in the future and overall transportation safety, with a focus on the needs of the law enforcement personnel who access the data. This research is urgently needed because automated vehicles have already been involved in high-profile crashes. For the time being, crash investigators need to work with the manufacturers to obtain driving automation data, which opens the possibility for bias. Furthermore, as CAVs are still in a testing phase, there is an opportunity to standardize the data before deployment, after which it will become more difficult to make changes. Objectives:

• Collaborate with law enforcement to identify strengths and shortcomings with existing EDR files and determine how data available to connected and automated vehicles can be leveraged to improve crash investigation procedures and results.
• Identify other stakeholders who could benefit from improved crash data.
• Develop a framework for crash data presentation and archiving that improves on the current paper-based process.