Driving Performance While Engaged in Distracting Tasks: The Effects on Drivers with Traumatic Brain Injuries

• Activity Number: 612
• Type: Topic Contributed
• Date/Time: Thursday, August 5, 2010 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
• Sponsor: Social Statistics Section
• Author(s): Linda Ng Boyle and David Neyens*+ and Kevin Manning and Jocelyn Ang and Maria Schultheis
• Companies: University of Washington and The University of Iowa and Drexel University and Drexel University and Drexel University
• Keywords: driver distraction ; traumatic brain injury ; simulator ; Bayesian ; on-road

Abstract

Traumatic brain injuries (TBI) result from the transfer of energy from an external source to the brain. These injuries can result in substantial cognitive decrements that influence an individual's ability to resume driving. A study on differences in driver performance between drivers with and without TBI was conducted in an on-road study using an instrumented vehicle. Each participant completed three distracting tasks: coin sorting, CD selection, and radio tuning while driving. Processing of video and eye data along with corresponding GPS road segments was conducted and incorporated into a Bayesian model. This model used informative prior distributions generated from a pilot study in an earlier driving simulator using the same distracting tasks. Driver performance measures include mean speed, standard deviation of speed, and eye glance behavior.