New cars are being introduced with front passenger airbags (PAB) as a standard safety feature. Airbags are designed to reduce vehicle occupant injury in the event of a collision. In order for airbags to be effective, occupants must be restrained while travelling in vehicles. Children are often seen unrestrained while travelling in vehicles throughout Malaysia. Studies have shown that unrestrained children are exposed to higher risk of injury in a crash involving PAB deployment, compared to those who are restrained. The intended life saving benefit of PAB may be negated if child occupants remain mostly unrestrained. The objective of the study is to determine the prevalence of child restraint system (CRS) use in vehicles, especially those equipped with PAB. To realise this, an observational survey was conducted at selected day care centres in Kajang, to determine the use of child restraints among children aged six and below, child seating position, driver seatbelt use and availability of PAB. The study was performed in the first half of 2012. A total of 537 children aged 6 and below were observed. 51.4% of the children were seated in the front passenger seat, 45.3% were seated in the rear and 3.3% were seated on the driver’s lap. 13.3% of children seated in front seats were restrained, compared to 4.9% of those seated at the rear. Children were 4 times more likely to be restrained if the drivers were belted compared to those who were not. In vehicles equipped with PAB, 11.2% of children seated on the front seats are restrained, while in vehicles without, 17.1% were restrained. The restraint use among children is low and the presence of PAB does not have a significant effect on the use of CRS. There was a significant association between belted drivers and restrained children. The low CRS use is expected as the current legislation does not specifically mention the requirement for children to use CRS while travelling in vehicle, even if the vehicle is equipped with PAB.

The Malaysian Institute of Road Safety Research has embarked on the development of a fixed-based driving simulator that can be reconfigured easily to suit various road safety research requirements. The objective of this study is to measure driver distraction in terms of participants' response time for different road conditions and secondary tasks using a driving simulator. Three different simulation routes were designed in the study-expressway, off-ramp, and curved road. Thirty participants took part in the study. Two types of detection response task were used in the study-tactile and visual. Recall number, surrogate reference task, navigation, and texting were used as secondary tasks. The results showed that in terms of road segments, both types of detection response task were found to be sensitive; longer response times were observed for more demanding off-ramp and curved road sections when compared with expressway. Furthermore, for secondary tasks, the participants took longer to respond to both stimuli, particularly for the more difficult task followed by an easier task. In general, response times increased as a function of road segments as well as exposure to secondary tasks.Keywords: Driving simulator; driver distraction; response time; secondary task; road safety. INTRODUCTIONIn 2012, 6,917 fatalities were recorded in Malaysia due to road crashes, with an average of 18 people killed every day [1]. This is not only happening in this country but also worldwide, as road traffic injury is the eleventh leading cause of death, and over one million people are killed every year in road crashes [2]. A previous study showed that human errors are the major contributing factor in approximately 90% of road traffic accidents [3]; driver distraction is a significant contributor to road traffic accidents [4,5]. Naturalistic driving studies have demonstrated that drivers have a tendency to spend a vast amount of driving time doing secondary tasks. According to research, approximately 23% of all crashes and near-crashes were caused by distraction due to secondary tasks [6]. Driving performance begins to deteriorate when drivers fail to allocate sufficient attention to the driving task at critical moments, because they are engaged in another task, thereby resulting in an impairment of the ability to drive safely and effectively [7,8]. One of the prominent tools to study human-related issues specifically for driver distraction is a driving simulator. It is able to simulate a virtual driving environment and resemble real driving conditions [9][10][11]. The advantages of

This paper discusses about the development of a driving simulator with 2 Degree of Freedom (DOF) motion platform as a data collection tool for driver behavior research. The simulator was installed with motion platform, steering wheel, pedals, transmission, screens, computer, simulation software and sound system to record the driving behaviors in simulated traffic environment. Data containing information such as participants' response time, vehicle speed, acceleration, braking, turn signals use and vehicle positioning were collected. This paper also discusses the benefits of driving simulator development for driver behavior research while addressing its challenge and limitation for future improvement. The paper concludes that the driving simulator development can contribute significantly to road safety research specifically in driver behavior study.

The Malaysian Institute of Road Safety Research (MIROS) has embarked on the development of an instrumented vehicle that purposely to suit various driver behavioural researches. One of the studies was pertaining to driver distraction. The objectives of this study are to measure the driver distraction in terms of participants’ response time and hit rate using the instrumented vehicle. Besides, the study was also conducted to determine whether road conditions and secondary tasks are associated with the participants’ response time. The results showed that response times generally increased as a function of road segments as well as exposure to secondary tasks. In terms of road segments, longer response times were observed for the more demanding off-ramp and curvy road sections when compared with expressway driving. Furthermore, for the secondary tasks, the participants took a longer duration to respond to the tactile stimulus, particularly for the difficult n-back task.