Assessment of Driver’s Arousal State to Test Highway Drowsiness Prevention Facilities

Abstract

Objective: The objective of this study is to develop an evaluation method that can determine whether a highway drowsiness prevention facilities suitably induced driver’s arousal state. Background: In August 2010, Korea transportation safety authority investigated the cause among 1,000 drivers with traffic accidents. As a result, drowsy driving covered the highest percentage of 36.7%. Therefore, in order to reduce the number of traffic accidents, the preventing of drowsy driving is essential. Method: Based on the reviewing research, we define a new terminology, “Arousal shift”, which is the intermediate stage between drowsiness and arousal. In addition, we used the psychophysiological and behavioral parameters of driver, which can determine the level of drowsiness. We collected driver’s psychophysiological and performance data by using a virtual driving simulator. We computed the correlation between KSS and collected data. Results: We choose the variables showing high correlationship with KSS score, and suggested a multiple regression model that could predict the drowsiness of driver. In addition, we suggested a probabilistic approach to decide driver’s state in terms of KSS. Conclusion: We showed the possibility to find a method of preventing the driver’s drowsiness by defining “arousal shift”. Due to the 60% of explanatory power of model, the practical field application needs to be done with a group of drivers showing actual change in PKSS.