Confirming the Correlation between Steering Wheel Operation and Driver Mental Workload for Mountain Road Driving

To confirm the correlation between steering wheel operation and driver workload, long-distance real vehicle tests under natural driving behavior were performed on four complex two-lane mountain highways. Drivers’ heart rate signals and steering wheel input data were collected. Using heart rate increase (HRI) as an intermediary, the relationship between the angular speed of the steering wheel and driver workload was analyzed. The results demonstrated that: (1) drivers’ heart rates were significantly higher during overtaking than under normal driving conditions. Furthermore, HRI was significantly higher when overtaking large vehicles than that when overtaking small passenger cars. Moreover, drivers’ heart rates had already substantially increased before the start of overtaking. (2) Drivers’ heart rates increased when traveling on horizontal curves. The sharper the curve was, the higher their heart rate increased. (3) Drivers’ HRIs had a strong positive correlation with the speed of steering wheel, for both the conditions of overtaking and driving on curves. Therefore, the correlation between steering wheel operation and driver workload was confirmed.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AND30 Standing Committee on Simulation and Measurement of Vehicle and Operator Performance.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Xu, Jin
  • Chen, Wei
  • Shao, Yi-ming
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 96th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2017-1-8 to 2017-1-12
• Date: 2017

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; Photos; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 12p
• Monograph Title: TRB 96th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Automatic data collection systems; Drivers; Heart rate; Mountain roads; Passing; Steering; Workload
• Subject Areas: Highways; Safety and Human Factors;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01625580
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 17-02776
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Feb 7 2017 9:47AM