Driving Performance of Drug-Impaired Bus Drivers in Work Zone Areas

There are several safety issues in work zone areas due to decrease lane width, and presence of large equipment and on-site workers. The safety issues are compounded for drivers that are also drug impaired. In this study, we examine the driver performance of 18 commercial bus operators in a simulated environment while they are under the influence of a benzodiazepine drug (Triazolam). The findings show that those drivers under the influence of the drug had higher steering entropy and greater difficulty staying close to the intended travel lane when compared to those who were not under the influence of the drug. These wider travelling distances around work barrels, by those under the influence of Triazolam, could have a potential impact on the safety of nearby construction workers and heavy machine operators

FollowMe: Vehicle Behaviour Prediction in Autonomous Vehicle Settings

An ego vehicle following a virtual lead vehicle planned route is an essential component when autonomous and non-autonomous vehicles interact. Yet, there is a question about the driver's ability to follow the planned lead vehicle route. Thus, predicting the trajectory of the ego vehicle route given a lead vehicle route is of interest. We introduce a new dataset, the FollowMe dataset, which offers a motion and behavior prediction problem by answering the latter question of the driver's ability to follow a lead vehicle. We also introduce a deep spatio-temporal graph model FollowMe-STGCNN as a baseline for the dataset. In our experiments and analysis, we show the design benefits of FollowMe-STGCNN in capturing the interactions that lie within the dataset. We contrast the performance of FollowMe-STGCNN with prior motion prediction models showing the need to have a different design mechanism to address the lead vehicle following settings

Change Detection Performance Under Divided Attention with Dynamic Driving Scenarios

This study investigated the effect of cognitive load on the relationshipbetween confidence in detecting changes and actual change detectionperformance. Two experiments simulated glancing away from the roadway byperiodically blanking the driver’s view for one second. Experiments wereconducted in a driving simulator where participants were asked to detect changesin the location and appearance of other vehicles while driving on a multi-lanesuburban roadway. In addition, cognitive load was imposed using messages thatparticipants were asked to listen to and answer questions about. Participants’sensitivity (d’) to vehicle changes was calculated and compared with subjectiveratings of confidence in detecting those changes. Results indicated a positiverelationship between d’ and confidence, suggesting that participants were aware ofthe factors that influenced their change-detection performance. However, thestrength of the relationship was situation-dependent. The strength of therelationship decreased when the detection task was more difficult and in thepresence of cognitive load

Variability of Driving Performance During Microsleeps

This study aimed to evaluate the value of measuring microsleeps as anindicator of driving performance impairment in drowsy drivers with sleepdisorders. Drivers with sleep disorders such as obstructive sleep apnea/hypopenasyndrome (OSAHS) are at increased risk for driving performance errors due tomicrosleep episodes, which presage sleep onset. To meet this aim, we tested thehypothesis that OSAHS drivers show impaired control over vehicle steering, laneposition and velocity during microsleep episodes compared to when they aredriving without microsleeps on similar road segments. A microsleep is defined asa 3-14 sec episode during which 4-7 Hz (theta) activity replaces the waking 8-13Hz (alpha) background rhythm. Microsleep episodes were identified in theelectroencephalography (EEG) record by a neurologist certified by the AmericanBoard of Sleep Medicine. Twenty-four drivers with OSAHS were tested usingsimulated driving scenarios. Steering variability, lane position variability,acceleration and velocity measures were assessed in the periods during amicrosleep, immediately preceding (pre) microsleep, and immediately following(post) microsleep. In line with our introductory hypothesis, drivers with OSAHSdid show significantly greater variation in steering and lane position during themicrosleep episodes compared to the periods pre and post microsleep. The resultsindicate that identification of microsleep episodes can provide a marker fordeclining vehicle control of drivers with OSAHS

The Effect of Voice Interactions on Drivers’ Guidance of Attention

The objective of the current study was to assess the effect of voice interactions with an in-vehicle system on drivers’ guidance of attention. Our approach was to examine the effect of voice interactions on endogenous control of attention using a modified Posner cue-target paradigm. Consistent with the bottleneck hypothesis, dual-task slowing was observed when drivers responded to an auditory task and to a pedestrian detection task concurrently. This interference contributed to disrupted attention allocation, especially when drivers could not rely on their endogenous control of attention

Factors Affecting Glance Behavior when Interacting with In-Vehicle Devices: Implications from a Simulator Study

This study examined the effects of text entry and reading on drivers’ eye glance behavior, as influenced by text length and presence of ambient text (i.e., text around targeted text). A simulator study was conducted with 28 drivers. The findings showed that text entry tasks required longer eyes-off-road (EOR) time than text reading tasks. The presence of ambient text also increased the total EOR time for text reading. Tasks with shorter text required shorter individual glances, but even the shortest text entry tasks resulted in long glances for those who entered text in large chunks. Thus, shortening the text length alone may not ensure safe glance behavior and other countermeasures may need to be considered

Assessing Text Reading and Text Entry while Driving Using the Visual Occlusion Technique

This study estimated the time drivers spend completing text reading and text entry tasks of varying difficulty levels using visual occlusion to mimic the timesharing between driving and interacting with text. The findings showed that text entry took longer than text reading and task time increased with longer text length. In the occlusion condition, the total task time with vision unoccluded was shorter than the task time in the static condition, although this finding was not consistent across reading and entry. Ambient text (irrelevant text surrounding the text of interest) had no effect on time on task. These results should be considered in light of the acceptable limits for time on task and can inform the design of invehicle systems that require text reading or entry

Driver Behavior on Expressway Intersections: Differences in Visual Scanning, Stress and Driving Performance

The goal of this project is to compare drivers of different age groups (i.e., young, middle aged and older drivers) and to determine how visual scanning behavior, drive performance, and stress levels may be influenced by characteristics of the driver on and off the expressways. It was hypothesized that different drive performances and visual scanning behavior would exist among different age groups. This hypothesis was based on different crashes rates at intersection negotiations for these three age groups identified by previous studies. Results of this study confirmed the age related differences do exist at intersection negotiations

Decisions and actions of distracted drivers at the onset of yellow lights

Driving on an approach to a signalized intersection while distracted is relatively risky, as potential vehicular conflicts and resulting angle collisions tend to be relatively more severe compared to other locations. Given the prevalence and importance of this particular scenario, the objective of this study was to examine the decisions and actions of distracted drivers during the onset of yellow lights. Driving simulator data were obtained from a sample of 69 drivers under baseline and handheld cell phone conditions at the University of Iowa – National Advanced Driving Simulator. Explanatory variables included age, gender, cell phone use, distance to stop-line, and speed. Although there is extensive research on drivers’ responses to yellow traffic signals, the examinations have been conducted from a traditional regression-based approach, which do not necessary provide the underlying relations and patterns among the sampled data. In this paper, we exploit the benefits of both classical statistical inference and data mining techniques to identify the a priori relationships among main effects, non-linearities, and interaction effects. Results suggest that the probability of yellow light running increases with the increase in driving speed at the onset of yellow. Both young (18–25 years) and middle-aged (30–45 years) drivers reveal reduced propensity for yellow light running whilst distracted across the entire speed range, exhibiting possible risk compensation during this critical driving situation. The propensity for yellow light running for both distracted male and female older (50–60 years) drivers is significantly higher. Driver experience captured by age interacts with distraction, resulting in their combined effect having slower physiological response and being distracted particularly risky