State-of-the-art review on sustainable driving behavior: trade-offs between road safety, fuel consumption and emissions

Driving behavior is the most critical factor influencing road transportation sustainability by shaping its three greatest pillars: (i) road safety, (ii) driving economy, and (iii) environmental impact. This paper aims to systematically review the role of driving behavior on these pillars simultaneously, as expressed by road crashes, fuel consumption, and vehicular emissions. Driving behavior factors affecting both road safety and driving efficiency, along with the modeling approaches and methodological issues, are explored, focusing on driving studies under real-world conditions. A two-stage PRISMA approach was developed to shortlist the most relevant studies for systematic review out of 1,120 initial studies, with each stage focused on safety and eco-driving behavior studies. The review extracted 78 metrics covering driver-related and external road-, traffic-, and weather-related parameters, which were found to significantly affect driving efficiency and road crash occurrence. The main driver behavior factors found to affect both road crashes and fuel consumption/emissions are related to average and instantaneous driving speed and acceleration, harsh acceleration and deceleration events, driving volatility, vehicular jerk, and idling during driving. Two main categories of data collection approaches were obtained: controlled experiments and large-scale naturalistic experiments, while the varied modeling techniques were applied across different scales of analysis: microscopic and mesoscopic scales. A discussion of the knowledge gaps in the potential of an integrated methodological framework of driving behavior assessment in the context of road safety, economy, and environmental sustainability is then provided, followed by the relevant conclusions.