Is organized carpooling safer? Speeding and distracted driving behaviors from a naturalistic driving study in Brazil

Carpooling consists of drivers and passengers sharing a journey and its costs. Nowadays, in the context of mobility as a service, organized carpooling encompasses a service and trust relationship between drivers and passengers, by matching common routes and splitting cost through mobile phone applications. Therefore, passengers expect a certain level of travel quality and safety. In this context, this research aims to verify the hypothesis that drivers in an organized carpooling situation (CP) show safer driving behavior in terms of speeding (SP) and mobile phone use while driving (MPU) in comparison with non-carpooling (NCP) drivers. The research is based on data from the Brazilian Naturalistic Driving Study (NDS-BR) conducted in the City of Curitiba, with 40.45 driving hours and a traveled distance of 895.87 km. Methodology included the selection of safety performance indicators on SP and MPU, use of nonparametric Wilcoxon signed rank test for safety performance indicator comparisons and Pearson Chi-Square to test the association between CP or NCP and low or high indicator values. Hypothesis test results point in the same direction and partially confirm the initial assumption that CP induces safer behavior in terms of speeding. The statistically sound results showed that CP drivers engaged in less speeding episodes and mobile phone use duration in comparison to NCP drivers, as well as lower speed while using a mobile phone. In addition, driver behavior in CP and NCP situations also differed in terms of the type of MPU, with the proportion of types of use that demand a higher level of visual and manual distraction being higher among NCP drivers. In summary, these results confirm the initial hypothesis of safer driving behavior during carpooling in terms of MPU while driving.