Recent technological advancements allow monitoring of drivers’ behaviour and offer the opportunity for providing feedback. While this approach has been shown to have a positive effect on driver behaviour, whether it is accepted by drivers has not yet been extensively investigated. This questionnaire study examined the opinions of a sample of 628 Dutch drivers on the potential use of a monitoring and feedback system. The focus was on (1) whether drivers would be interested in being assessed, (2) whether data collection (i.e., monitoring) could be used for this purpose, and (3) which features the potential system must have in order to get accepted. The results showed that participants were moderately enthusiastic about the prospect of receiving monitoring feedback: on average, their opinion was between neutral and positive. Professional drivers expressed slightly more positive opinions, but no demographic variable was strongly associated with acceptability. Many drivers rated themselves as good drivers already and had low sensitivity to data collection, i.e., participants indicated being used to data collection online. If they were to use a monitoring and feedback device, participants indicated a preference for data on speed and forward-facing video footage and a preference for personalisation. The use of a monitoring and feedback system can be considered as a trade-off between sharing personal data and receiving support to improve driving skills. Based on the participants’ reported online behaviour, it appears that the perceived costs associated with sharing data are small. The potential benefits of driver monitoring and feedback, however, are not salient to the participants, which may limit the use of such a system on the roads.

Vehicles are increasingly equipped with sensors that capture the state of the driver, the vehicle, and the environment. These developments are relevant to formal driver testing, but little is known about the extent to which driving examiners would support the use of sensor data in their job. This semi-structured interview study examined the opinions of 37 driving examiners about data-driven assessment of test candidates. The results showed that the examiners were supportive of using data to explain their pass/fail verdict to the candidate. According to the examiners, data in an easily accessible form such as graphs of eye movements, headway, speed, or braking behavior, and color-coded scores, supplemented with camera images, would allow them to eliminate doubt or help them convince disagreeing test-takers. The examiners were skeptical about higher levels of decision support, noting that forming an overall picture of the candidate's abilities requires integrating multiple context-dependent sources of information. The interviews yielded other possible applications of data collection and sharing, such as selecting optimal routes, improving standardization, and training and pre-selecting candidates before they are allowed to take the driving test. Finally, the interviews focused on an increasingly viable form of data collection: simulator-based driver testing. This yielded a divided picture, with about half of the examiners being positive and half negative about using simulators in driver testing. In conclusion, this study has provided important insights regarding the use of data as an explanation aid for examiners. Future research should consider the views of test candidates and experimentally evaluate different forms of data-driven support in the driving test.