Research on Driver Physiological Load at the Lowest Point of City River-crossing Tunnels

There would be widespread congestion when vehicle accidents occur in city river-crossing tunnels, which are usually crucial parts in city road network. Great gradient change at the lowest point of the tunnel makes it more difficult to control the vehicles if the drivers have to make a turn at the same time. This paper researched on the safety of the lowest point of city river-crossing tunnels by building the simulated tunnel scenes through UC-win/Road software and exploring the heart rate of drivers in different conditions through the driving simulator experiments. Controlling variables method was adopted to establish the simplified models and the considered variables were longitudinal grade and radius of horizontal curve. Based on the heart rate data around the time vehicles passing through the lowest point, we defined two new physiological indexes in this paper -- the variability of maximum heart rate and the variability of average heart rate to measure the drivers’ physiological load. The driving simulator experiment discovered that the two physiological indexes both had positive correlation with the longitudinal grade while they had negative correlation with the radius of horizontal curve. The authors also found that there was no big difference of the drivers’ heart rate between the situations with design speed of 60km/h and 40km/h. At last, the authors evaluated the South Xizang Road Tunnel and the conclusion was that its lowest point was safe for driving.

• Record URL:
  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trpro.2017.05.178
• Record URL:
  http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352146517304714
• Availability:
  • Find a library where document is available. Order URL: http://worldcat.org/issn/23521465
• Supplemental Notes:
  • © 2017 Deshan Feng et al. Published by Elsevier B.V.
• Authors:
  • Feng, Deshan
  • Chen, Feng
  • Pan, Xiaodong
• Conference:
  • World Conference on Transport Research - WCTR 2016
  • Location: Shanghai , China
  • Date: 2016-7-10 to 2016-7-15
• Publication Date: 2017

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: pp 1494-1502
• Serial:
  • Transportation Research Procedia
  • Volume: 25
  • Issue Number: 0
  • Publisher: Elsevier
  • ISSN: 2352-1465
  • Serial URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/23521465/
• Publication flags:

  Open Access (libre)

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Drivers; Driving simulators; Heart rate; Physiological aspects; Traffic congestion; Traffic crashes; Underwater tunnels; Vehicular tunnels
• Subject Areas: Bridges and other structures; Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; Safety and Human Factors;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01642176
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Jun 13 2017 3:03PM