Measurement of driver distraction in malaysia’s traffic environment: a driving simulator study

Abstract

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