PASSENGER PRESENCE EFFECT ON ELDERLY DRIVERS EVALUATED BY A DRIVING SIMULATOR

摘要

The positive effect of passenger presence, reduction in traffic accident rates with passenger presence, has been known to be most remarkable on elderly drivers. This study investigated the passenger presence effect on elderly drivers by using a driving simulator. Healthy elderly drivers drove with or without a passenger giving driving instructions according to dangerous scenes on the monitor of a driving simulator. We examined the number of accidents and the change of driving speeds during the manipulation of a driving simulator in front of dangerous scenes with or without passenger's guidance. A significant reduction of the accident number and driving speed in the presence of passenger was shown and a driving simulator may be a useful tool to elucidate the mechanism of passenger presence effect.