Comparison of cognitively impaired, healthy non-professional and healthy professional driver behavior on a small and low-fidelity driving simulator

Abstract

It is becoming an important issue to develop methods to evaluate driving capability of cognitively impaired persons. In this paper, we conducted an experiment, by using a small and low-fidelity driving simulator (a Honda Safety-Navi), to collect driving data of several categories of drivers in order to understand what kind of driving activities could be degraded due to the cognitive disabilities. Healthy non-professional drivers, healthy professional bus drivers, patients but not cognitively impaired, drivers cognitively impaired by "higher brain dysfunction" were compared. The results showed that degradation of the skill to stop at an appropriate point required by a stop line is a useful index of the whole driving skill in the experimental conditions. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.