Variations in Road Conditions on Driver Stress: Insights from an On-road Study

摘要

A number of studies have used heart rate variability (HRV) measures to estimate driver stress acrossdifferent driving conditions. Understanding the constructs of driver stress can provide insights regardingthe underlying reasons for safety-critical events. The intent of this study is to evaluate theelectrocardiogram (ECG) activities of drivers along a pre-defined route with varying roadway conditions.Heart rate, standard deviation of selected RR interval series (SDNN) and low frequency to high frequencyratio (LF/HF) were examined. An examination of short interval stress at evenly distributed points along theroute indicates that some impact was detected from long duration driving and the statistical model wasadjusted accordingly to reflect this. The findings suggest that temporal and frequency domain parametersgenerated similar characteristics regardless of the direction of travel (clockwise or counterclockwisedirection). That is, these two parameters provided fairly consistent outcomes regarding driver workload.However, heart rate was not as good an indicator suggesting that this measure may be picking up someother unexplained effects.