Driving performance on monotonous roads


Autoria(s): Larue, Gregoire; Rakotonirainy, Andry; Pettitt, Anthony N.
Data(s)

06/06/2010

Resumo

Driving on motorways has largely been reduced to a lane-keeping task with cruise control. Rapidly, drivers are likely to get bored with such a task and take their attention away from the road. This is of concern in terms of road safety – particularly for professional drivers - since inattention has been identified as one of the main contributing factors to road crashes and is estimated to be involved in 20 to 30% of these crashes. Furthermore, drivers are not aware that their vigilance level has decreased and that their driving performance is impaired. Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) intervention can be used as a countermeasure against vigilance decrement. This paper aims to identify a variety of metrics impacted during monotonous driving - ranging from vehicle data to physiological variables - and relate them to two monotonous factors namely the monotony of the road design (straightness) and the monotony of the environment (landscape, signage, traffic). Data are collected in a driving simulator instrumented with an eye tracking system, a heart rate monitor and an electrodermal activity device (N=25 participants). The two monotonous factors are varied (high and low) leading to the use of four different driving scenarios (40 minutes each). We show with Generalised Linear Mixed Models that driver performance decreases faster when the road is monotonous. We also highlight that road monotony impairs a variety of driving performance and vigilance measures, ranging from speed, lateral position of the vehicle to physiological measurements such as heart rate variability, blink frequency and electrodermal activity. This study informs road designers of the importance of having a varied road environment. It also provides a range of metrics that can be used to detect in real-time the impairment of driving performance on monotonous roads. Such knowledge could result in the development of an in-vehicle device warning drivers at early signs of driving performance impairment on monotonous roads.

Formato

application/pdf

Identificador

http://eprints.qut.edu.au/33001/

Publicador

Canadian Association of Road Safety Professionals

Relação

http://eprints.qut.edu.au/33001/1/c33001.pdf

http://www.carsp.ca/

Larue, Gregoire, Rakotonirainy, Andry, & Pettitt, Anthony N. (2010) Driving performance on monotonous roads. In Proceedings of 20th Canadian Multidisciplinary Road Safety Conference, Canadian Association of Road Safety Professionals, Niagara Falls, Ontario.

Direitos

Copyright 2010 [please consult the authors]

Fonte

Centre for Accident Research & Road Safety - Qld (CARRS-Q); School of Curriculum; Faculty of Built Environment and Engineering; Faculty of Health; Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation

Palavras-Chave #170200 COGNITIVE SCIENCE
Tipo

Conference Paper