Fuel consumption and vehicle breakdown depend upon the driving style of the driver, for example, hard driving style leads to more wear and consequently more failures of vehicle components. Because of this, it is important to identify and classify the driver’s driving style in order to give the driver feedback through a driver assistance system. The driver would then be able to detect and learn to avoid a driving style that is not appropriate. The input data is provided by different sensors installed in the vehicle, where different drivers and driving routes have been measured. The data is subjectively classified into two different driving styles: normal and hard. Hard driving style can be characterized, for example, by rapid acceleration and braking. Since it is not trivial to build a model which is able to distinguish hard driving from normal, a data mining approach has been employed. In the paper, several classifiers are compared (including e.g. neural networks and decision trees) and a discussion is made on the advantages and disadvantages of the different methods. Copyright © 2012 SAE International.