Citation

Papantoniou P. Traffic Injury Prev. 2018; 19(3): 317-325.

Affiliation

National Technical University of Athens , Department of Transportation Planning and Engineering , 5, Iroon Polytechniou str, 15773 , Zografou, Athens , Greece.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/15389588.2017.1398825

PMID

29087738

Abstract

OBJECTIVE The present research relies on two main objectives. The first is to investigate whether latent model analysis through a structural equation model can be implemented on driving simulator data in order to define an unobserved driving performance variable. Subsequently, the second objective is to investigate and quantify the effect of several risk factors including distraction sources, driver characteristics, road and traffic environment on the overall driving performance and not in independent driving performance measures Methods For the scope of the present research, 95 participants from all age groups were asked to drive under different types of distraction (conversation with passenger, cell phone use) in urban and rural road environment with low and high traffic volume in a driving simulator experiment. Then, in the framework of the statistical analysis, a correlation table is presented investigating any of a broad class of statistical relationships between driving simulator measures while a structural equation model has been developed in which overall driving performance is estimated as a latent variable based on several individual driving simulator measures.

RESULTS Results confirm the suitability of the structural equation model and indicate that the selection of the specific performance measures that define overall performance should be guided by a rule of representativeness between the selected variables. Moreover, results indicate that conversation with the passenger was not found to have a statistically significant effect indicating that drivers do not change their performance while conversing with a passenger compared to undistracted driving. On the other hand, results support the notion hypothesis that cell phone use has a negative effect on driving performance. Furthermore, regarding driver characteristics, both age, gender and experience have a significant effect on driving performance indicating that driver-related characteristics play the most crucial role in overall driving performance Conclusions The findings of this study allow a new approach on the investigation of driving behaviour in driving simulator experiments and in general. By the successful implementation of the structural equation model, driving behaviour can be assessed in terms of the overall performance and not through individual performance measures which allows an important scientific step forward from piecemeal analyses to a sound combined analysis of the interrelationship between several risk factors and overall driving performance.

Language: en

Keywords

driver distraction; driving performance; driving simulator; road safety; structural equation models