Methodological Aspects of Field Operational Tests of After-Marketand Nomadic Driver Support Systems and Impacts on Mobility

Background:This paper reports on the methodology undertaken and some results achieved within a study of drivers using aftermarket andnomadic devices (the TeleFOT project). Objective:To evaluate the methodology for conducting Field Operational Tests for Information and Communication Technology whilst alsoproviding an example of the method applied in the context of mobility within the TeleFOT project. Methods:A ‘Top down, bottom up’ approach to the derivation of research questions and hypotheses is described. Statistical analysis has beenundertaken on data collected through Field Operational Tests and Travel Diaries considering the impact of information functions(such as navigation, traffic information and green driving) upon journey length. Results:A summary of the results relating specifically to how the length of a journey can be affected by information functions indicates thatNavigation and Traffic information can reduce the length of journeys whilst Green Driving functions tend to increase the journeylength. Conclusion:The FOT methodology was successfully applied in the TeleFOT project as was the novel method for generating research questions.When turning the theoretical FOT method developed in FESTA into practice, several good innovations were made which can berecommended for future FOTs; collation of metadata, the use of comparable origin / destination pairs for analysis, centralisedprocessing of raw data into legs in order to simplify the analysis of the huge datasets collected in the project.