Driver Mental Workload Analysis And Experimental Test Of Urban Intersection Driving Scenarios

Coping with complex road situations in big cities, such as Beijing, taxes drivers'brain everyday. Chinese drivers often have to face the dilemma of the interaction with other road users in most intersections, which requires more decisions and responses to be made and exhausts drivers'mental resources. The purpose of the study is to estimate drivers'mental workload of a given task quantitively by means of both task analysis and mental workload rating.The research involves both subjective analysis and experimental test. The initial results of subjective mental workload analysis are based on McKnight and Adams driving task analysis method. In the pursuit of a"localized"result, five typical intersections are selected in the focus group discussion.Afterwards, a series of experimental tests verified the subjective results.16 participants were invited to accomplish a given driving task. By recording their basic motions, we found an approximate proportional relation between the number of motions and subjective results.A quantitive estimation model was established based on the above results and applied in several given driving tasks in Beijing and Los Angeles for comparison.