Driving performance grading and analytics: learning internal indicators and external factors from multi-source data

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to deal with the practical challenge faced by modern logistics enterprises to accurately evaluate driving performance with high computational efficiency under the disturbance of road smoothness and to identify significantly associated performance influence factors. Design/methodology/approach: The authors cooperate with a logistics server (G7) and establish a driving grading system by constructing real-time inertial navigation data-enabled indicators for both driving behaviour (times of aggressive speed change and times of lane change) and road smoothness (average speed and average vibration times of the vehicle body). Findings: The developed driving grading system demonstrates highly accurate evaluations in practical use. Data analytics on the constructed indicators prove the significances of both driving behaviour heterogeneity and the road smoothness effect on objective driving grading. The methodologies are validated with real-life tests on different types of vehicles, and are confirmed to be quite effective in practical tests with 95% accuracy according to prior benchmarks. Data analytics based on the grading system validate the hypotheses of the driving fatigue effect, daily traffic periods impact and transition effect. In addition, the authors empirically distinguish the impact strength of external factors (driving time, rainfall and humidity, wind speed, and air quality) on driving performance. Practical implications: This study has good potential for providing objective driving grading as required by the modern logistics industry to improve transparent management efficiency with real-time vehicle data. Originality/value: This study contributes to the existing research by comprehensively measuring both road smoothness and driving performance in the driving grading system in the modern logistics industry.