Research On Driver’s Visual Characteristics And Heatr Rate On Xpressway Tunnel Sections

With the rapid development of traffic facilities, expressway tunnel has a greatincrease in the amount. Expressway tunnels, on one hand realize cut-off bends, speed,improve operation safety and operation profit, on the other hand, with thedisadvantage of prone to accidents, accident harm and handling difficulty, they havebecome the bottleneck of expressway traffic.Traffic system is composed of driver, vehicle and road. Of them, driver is thetheme to perceive, so he’s the first important factor. Only by means of driver’sperception, can the performance of vehicles and road environment be reflected.Meanwhile, driver is also the most active factor in the system, for he is susceptible tothe other factors. So the study of the driver’s vision, physiological and psychologicalcharacteristics, has an important significance to improve the reliability of drivers andthe quality of vehicles and road environment.This paper firstly analyzes the tunnel environmental and its accidentcharacteristics. Through researching the relationship between human response andenvironment change, the relationship between tunnel environment and driver’s visualand physiological variation is established, which is the theoretical foundation for theresearch. Based on this theory, this paper chose driver’s pupil diameter size, averagefixation time, average fixation frequency, fixation times, the percentage of fixationtime, average blink time, average blink frequency and the percentage of blink time forthe vision load evaluation index between different length tunnel, while differentsections of the tunnel chose average fixation time, fixation frequency, average blinktime, average blink frequency for the vision load evaluation index. The heart rate ischosen as the physiological load evaluation indexes.Secondly, Using the Smart Eye tracking system, Biopac MP100Physiologicaldata recorder and other instruments, a road test platform is set up. Based on driver’seye movement data collected, driver’s pupil diameter variation and pupil diametersize differences among different length tunnels are analyzed, and some suggestionsfor optimizing tunnel road lighting are also put forward; The average fixation duration,average fixation times, and the percentage of fixation duration accounting for thetravelling time among different length tunnels, as well as the average fixation durationand the fixation times of different sections in tunnels, are also studied. Some speedlimit and tunnel interior lighting suggestions are put forward; In addition, the averageblink duration, average blink times, and the percentage of blink duration accountingfor the travelling time among different length tunnels, as well as the average blink duration and the blink times of different sections in tunnel are also studied, then somesuggestions for tunnel safe driving are offered. Applying the physiological datacollected in tunnels, heart rate variation with the length in different length tunnels isanalysed. Based on the change rule of the heart rate in the tunnel, driver’s minimumheart rate position is found and the relationships among the minimum heart rateposition, average vehicle velocity and the tunnel length are studied. Then a linearregression model of the three is established. After analyzing the model, somesuggestions for tunnel design and management is offered.