Abstract
In Japan, more than twenty thousands video-recording drive recorders have been already installed in taxies. These drive recorders were designed to record video image of the traffic environment ahead of the vehicle, and vehicle information (vehicle speed, acceleration and deceleration), before and after traffic accidents or near miss. Many companies emphasized that traffic accidents were greatly reduced by installing the drive recorders in taxies. The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport conducted the research on the effectiveness of the video-recording drive recorder in reducing the traffic accidents. In this research, the drive recorders were installed in 200 taxies, 3 buses, and 20 cargo trucks. Approximately 10,000 data were collected from January through March 2005 with the drive recorder installed in taxies. Around 50 to 60% of them were recorded when the vehicles were accelerated. Thirty to forty per cent were recorded when the vehicles were decelerated. Ten per cent of them were noise data. The data of near- miss were included in the deceleration data and 113 near-miss data were recorded in the period of this research.
The research shows that the video-recording drive recorder installed in the taxies reduced traffic accident and reduce the costs of after treatment of the accident.
Keywords - Drive recorder, video image, effectiveness, safety