Driver behaviour in unexpected critical events and in repeated exposures – A comparison

Abstract

Purpose This paper aims to determine how truck driver steering behaviour seen in repeated exposures to a critical event correlates to the behaviour resulting from an unexpected exposure to the same event. Methods Test subjects were exposed to an unexpected critical event in a high-fidelity driving simulator. Next, a slightly modified version of the scenario was repeated several times for each subject. The driver behaviour was then analysed using standard statistical tests. Results It was found that, in general, drivers keep most of their steering behaviour characteristics between test settings (unexpected and repeated). This is particularly interesting since a similar kind of behaviour preservation is generally not found in the case of braking behaviour. In fact, only one significant difference was found between the two test settings, namely regarding time-to-collision at steering initiation. Conclusions In experiments involving both an unexpected event and several repeated events one can, at least in some cases, design the repeated event such that behavioural data collected from that setting can be used along with data from the unexpected setting. Using this procedure, one can significantly increase the amount of collected data, something that can strongly benefit, for example, driver modelling.