Suitability of Heart Rate Recording as Physiological Measures Tool to Determine Drivers’ Performance Impairment: A Preliminary Study

Abstract

Performance impairment may occur if the driver feels fatigue while driving. This study investigated the drivers’ condition while performing one hour driving simulation in a controlled environment. The aim of this study was to evaluate whether heart rate measures can be used to detect impaired driver performance as well as reduced alertness. There are two different experiments conducted among the subjects; (i) without vibration and (ii) with vibration. A monotonous driving simulation scenario with low demand of traffic flow was utilized to detect drivers’ performance impairment. Heart rate (HR) was recorded over the entire experiment; (i) 30 minutes before driving, (ii) one hour during driving and (iii) 30 minutes after driving in the morning before lunch break. The baseline measurement was recorded when the subject has performed his daily routine in the same hours of experiment, which is about three hours. HR measures were derived and correlated to variation of lane deviation (VLD), a driving performance measure, and to the driver's state, which was estimated by the Karolinska Sleepiness Scale (KSS). Experimental result shows all subjects’ HR data were lower at the end of the driving task, particularly when driving in the simulator without vibration. Based on KSS evaluation, subjects tend to feel sleepy during driving and become less sleepy when they reach the destination. In term of VLD, all subjects tend xto cross the lane, which means they were not focused to the task. In conclusion, HR can be used as a tool to detect drivers’ performance and it is a useful indicator of physiological adaptation and intensity of effort.

Commonly Used Assessment Method to Evaluate Mental Work-load for Multiple Driving Distractions: A Systematic Review

“…Variations of the heart rate can be associated with the difference in emotional conditions of humans. Thus, heart rate plays an important role in the assessment of the mental condition of a driver throughout their driving performance and it has been studied in many current and past work ( 1 , 53 ).…”

Detecting driver fatigue using heart rate variability: A systematic review

“…Conventional ECG with gel electrodes was used by the majority (Buendia et al, 2019;Egelund, 1982;Fujiwara et al, 2019;Lenis et al, 2016;Murugan et al, 2020;Patel et al, 2011;Persson et al, 2021;Vicente et al, 2016;Wang et al, 2019;Zeng et al, 2020). Wearable ECG-based HR chest straps is another solution that brings better usability than the ECG with gel electrodes, which was used by (Khamis et al, 2016) and (Lee et al, 2019). (Jung et al, 2014) used integrated ECG electrodes on the steering wheel.…”

“…Subjective ratings were also used for many studies. The Karolinska Sleepiness Scale (KSS) is a well validated scale for subject rating (Kaida et al, 2006), it was used by several studies (Buendia et al, 2019;Khamis et al, 2016;Kundinger et al, 2020b;Persson et al, 2021;Salvati et al, 2021). Some studies used self-defined scales, e.g., (Wang et al, 2019) used a 4-level scale that has not been evaluated and the cut off level for classification was not reported.…”