A framework for evaluating in-vehicle applications regarding safety

Driver distraction is a serious and growing hazard to road safety. With the rapid introduction of the new information, communication, and entertainment technologies, this problem is becoming more threatening in the coming years. For instance, drivers who use mobile phones while driving are more likely to be involved in the car crash than those who do not. However, using technologies such as mobile phones and navigation systems in a vehicle can have different personal, social, practical, and psychological advantages which outweigh the risk. Therefore, there are number of metrics and methods for evaluating in-vehicle technologies, their services, applications, and functionalities to improve and make them safer. The purpose of this thesis was to investigate and develop a new framework which consists of a safety evaluation library and server for evaluating in-vehicle applications with safety consideration. By the use of the framework, Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) and third-party developers can get safety feedback from their in-vehicle applications in the real driving situation. For the safety analysis, different metrics were investigated. Due to the time restriction and based on the possible information that could be collected from an application and a vehicle, four metrics were used in the safety analysis including, total task time, number of interactions, speed, and completed task rate. In addition, the framework was deployed and tested by two case-study applications and some interesting results were discovered. Moreover, it was found out using the safety library by third-party developers is quite easy, which is one of the most important factors in the usability area