Abstract:

In order to study impacts of visual distraction degree on car following state in different traffic environments, three kinds of scenarios, urban, rural and motorway environment, were set up in a driving simulator, and vision occlusion method was used to quantify participants' visual distraction degree, and 0 seconds, 1 second and 2 seconds were chosen as three different occlusion duration. Then, 26 participants were tested on the simulator, and parameters like vehicle speed, longitudinal acceleration and vehicle position were collected. Finally, the repeated linear model was adopted to analyze influence of vision distraction degree on these parameters. The results show that car following distance and lane departure distance increase in urban, rural and motorway environment in sequence. On motorways, car following distance, time headway, and lane departure distance increase along with that of visual distraction degree. On urban and rural roads, visual distraction for 1 second does not have a significant effect on vehicles' movement state, and lane departure distance, car following distance and time headway only increase significantly when it lasts for 2 seconds, which leads to reduction of smoothness of vehicles' movement. And drivers can ensure driving safety by reducing driving speed and accelerating or decelerating it frequently.

Key words: visual distraction degree, vehicles' motion state, following distance, traffic environment complexity, visual occlusion, driving simulator