Driver Distraction Measurement in Real Road Traffic Environments: An Instrumented Vehicle Study

Abstract

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.