Effect of Light Duty Vehicle Performance on a Driving Style Metric

Eco-driving involves alterations to driving style to improve energy efficiency. The observed driving style reflects the combined effects of roadway, traffic, driver, and vehicle performance. Although the effect of roadway and traffic characteristics can be inferred from microscale driving activity data, the effect of vehicle performance on driving style is not properly understood. This paper addresses two questions: (1) how different is an individual driver’s driving style when operating vehicles with differences in performance?; and (2) how dissimilar are the driving styles of different drivers when operating vehicles that have similar performance? To answer these questions, we have gathered microscale vehicle activity measurements from 17 controlled real-world driving schedules and two years of naturalistic driving data from five drivers. We also developed a metric for driving style termed “envelope deviation,” which is a distribution of gaps between microscale activity (1 Hz) and fleet average envelope. We found that there is significant inter-driver heterogeneity in driving styles when controlling for vehicle performance. However, no significant inter-vehicle heterogeneity was present in driving styles while controlling for the driver. Findings from this study imply that the choice of vehicle does not significantly alter the natural driving style of a driver.