We ask that researchers check with their own institutions and organizations to determine if they have policies requiring IRB and/or Ethics reviews for access to research data collected from human subjects. Researchers must comply with their own institutions in this regard. VTTI does require proof of IRB approval before access is granted to any Personally Identifiable Information (PII) from research participants or information that may lead to the identification of a research participant.

Information about each original research project and the corresponding dataset are available under the Public Use Datasets tab. The Query Builder feature is coming soon and will be available once large-scale naturalistic datasets are available.

You should check with your institution to see what kind of training and approval is required for the type of research you are conducting with this data. If you have not taken human subjects research ethics training in the past, you may check with your institution to see if they offer training or you can complete the training offered by NIH:

• Training through the National Institutes of Health (NIH): https://phrp.nihtraining.com/users/login.php

A Data Use License (DUL) is an agreement executed between VTTI and your organization allowing access to the data for a set period of time and under certain conditions. VTTI will provide your organization with the correct version of a DUL to complete once we understand the nature of the data request. The DUL requires the requestor to provide a detailed data specification, data storage and security details, a list of researchers requesting access, and in some cases proof of Institutional Review Board (IRB) or Ethics Board review and approval.

If your research requires IRB review and approval you should check with your organization’s IRB to determine any cost associated with their review. If your organization does not have an IRB, you should direct questions about cost to the IRB-for-hire of your choosing.

There are currently no costs for obtaining, processing, and executing a Data Use License.

Potential users are asked to develop a data specification, and a cost quote will be generated based on that specification. The main driver of cost will be the complexity of the data request. The size of the request may also affect cost. All access to Personally Identifiable Information (PII) collected from research participants must take place in the secure data enclave at VTTI. The costs associated with using this space along with the proctors monitoring the access will be included in the generated cost quote.

We do not provide Institutional Review Board (IRB) services for projects that are not being performed by VTTI researchers. Please check with your own organization to make sure you comply with their requirements. If your research requires access to PII from human subjects you will be required to obtain IRB review and approval from a recognized IRB. If your organization does not have an IRB, you may use an independent IRB-for-hire. Questions regarding cost of IRB review should be directed to the IRB at your organization or to the IRB-for-hire of your choosing.

The process from initial contact until a contract is executed (if needed), a data use license is executed, and data are provided will generally take one to two months, assuming there are no setbacks. More complex data requests will take longer than simple ones. The total amount of time will also depend on your (and/or your contract and IRB office’s) responsiveness to different requests.

If you are interested in exploring how FMCSA data could be useful for your work, a good place to begin is to create a user-log in. A user log-in is required to access de-identified public-use downloadable limited data sets. A valid email address is required to create a user log-in.

Users may also log in and access the Query Builder to query data from our naturalistic datasets. These queries only produce summary results and do not allow for raw data download. However, the queries along with access to the data dictionaries can be useful in understanding the nature of the dataset and for planning a data request.

A catalog of naturalistic driving datasets has been compiled from previous data extraction requests (https://dataverse.vtti.vt.edu/dataverse/fmcsa). In many cases, with PI and FMCSA approval and with a Data Use License, these datasets can be accessed at no cost. We suggest looking through the datasets cataloged in the FMCSA Dataverse to see if any existing data extractions would meet your research needs.

Another approach for accessing FMCSA data is a custom data extraction, which also requires a Data Use License and FMCSA approval. This approach operates on a cost-recovery basis. The first step is to review the options above to become familiar with the data and provide us with a sense of the breadth of the data request. If you would like to pursue this approach, contact us at DataRepository@vtti.vt.edu so that development of your data specification can begin.

For requests seeking large portions of the dataset, algorithms operating on the data must be run within the computer cluster attached to the database. Algorithms may be provided to VTTI for execution, or executed by your personnel at our algorithmic enclave facilities. Each of these options will have associated costs, contact us at DataRepository@vtti.vt.edu for more details. Note that any data elements that include Personally Identifying Information (PII) can only be accessed within the secure data enclave at VTTI.