Telefot: first results in assessing the impacts of aftermarket and nomadic devices

This paper presents the status and first results achieved in the European Large Scale Collaborative Project TeleFOT (Field Operational Tests of Aftermarket and Nomadic Devices in vehicles). The paper is structured into three sections. The Introduction is conceived to show the key issues that TeleFOT deals with and its scenario. Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) have been the subject of significant research and development in Europe in recent years as they are contributing to a change in the transportation process. The market penetration of portable navigators and smart phones is consistently increasing but no standards directly related to the use of aftermarket and nomadic devices in vehicle exist. To conduct Field Operational Tests (FOTs) based on a large number of drivers using nomadic/mobile devices in their own vehicles and to raise wide awareness of the functions and the potential these devices offer are in the core of TeleFOT. The section on FOTs provides a description of the trials carried out in TeleFOT. It includes a presentation of the functions tested and of the Research Questions and Hypotheses generation process. The impact areas to be analysed in the project are shown as well. Finally, the section on Indicative results achieved shows the progress made so far in the project, in particular concerning the analysis of data from the pilot tests.