Comparison of driver distraction evaluations across two simulator platforms and an instrumented vehicle
DOI: 10.17077/drivingassessment.1539
archive: archived pipeline: cataloged verified
Summary
Driving Symposium proceedings comparing driver-distraction measures across two driving simulators (NADS MiniSim and a Real Time Technologies desktop simulator) and an instrumented 2005 Toyota Highlander on a closed course, using nearly identical procedures, secondary tasks, and Alert Response Task (ART) protocols across sites. Vehicle speed mean and standard deviation patterns and auditory ART performance were closely matched across the three platforms, supporting strong relative validity. Visual ART performance, by contrast, was highly reactive to the on-road instrumented-vehicle context, suggesting visual emergency-response measures behave differently in real vehicles than in simulators.
Key finding
Driving simulators and an instrumented vehicle on a closed course show high relative validity for speed and auditory alert measures across cognitive secondary-task demand, but visual alert-response measures generalize poorly from simulator to instrumented vehicle.
Methodology
Cross-platform comparison study using matched procedures, stimuli, and secondary tasks on three platforms (NADS MiniSim and RTI desktop simulators, and a 2005 Toyota Highlander instrumented vehicle on closed course) at TTI and Iowa sites; dependent measures included mean and SD of vehicle speed and auditory and visual Alert Response Task performance under varied secondary-task demands.
Sample size: N=121 (40 RTI sim, 41 instrumented vehicle, 40 MiniSim)
Quality score: 5 / 5