ABSTRACT

Specific negative driving behaviours, as a part of driving performance in general, are subject to the factors that affect human performance in the sense that driver impairment could be related to these behaviours. Ideally, in order to estimate the contribution of the changes in driver state to accident causation, one would want to be able to measure the physiological signals continuously in real-life driving. Driver state is not some unitary, fixed phenomenon, not even within an individual. It varies with time of day, age, subjective feelings, but also with time-on-task and all kinds of external influences, such as traffic environment and situational task-load, alcohol and drugs. Combined measurements of driver’s physiology and behaviour have demonstrated a relationship that could be used in the development phase of a driver impairment monitoring device on the basis of a limited number of unobtrusive vehicle parameters alone.