The application of automated feedback and gamification to improve Truck Drivers' functioning. (R-10570)

Freight traffic is an important part of logistics and related to economic well-being, also in Flanders. Still, "truck driver" is on the bottleneck profession list. This among others due to rising expectations, irregular hours, and negative consequences such as pollution, accidents, and traffic jams. Accidents in particular have large economic/social costs and drivers are often (partly) the cause. It is therefore important for transport companies that drivers are properly trained without losing the driver's motivation. Currently, people mainly rely on CODE 95, which is obtained on top of the driver's license. This training appears to be insufficient. Individualized feedback on sub-domains (e.g. safety, eco-efficiency, on-board documents, etc.) is required. At present, company coaches provide individual feedback, which is a major workload and automated advice is recommended. In the past, however, merely providing feedback turned out to be insufficient to achieve behavioral change. A solution is gamification, i.e. provision of game components (e.g. scores, rewards). Moreover, people are very diverse. Firstly: behavioral change is a process. Are people far in this process and are they taking action? Or do they not see a possible problem and is awareness needed? Secondly, motivation can be either intrinsic (I support it) or external (I am rewarded). To provide continuous training, we develop an application + web platform (app) that monitors and influences driving behavior through automated advice, taking into account the above described components (gamification, behavior change as a process, and motivation type). We hereby focus on two sub-domains, safety and eco-efficiency.

Keywords:road user behavior, traffic safety

Disciplines:Other information and computing sciences not elsewhere classified, Social change not elsewhere classified