Analysis of sleep deprivation effect to driving performance using reactiontest simulation

Abstract

Sleep deprivation condition might lead to falling asleep through inappropriate situations, such as driving. Driving in a state of fatigue or drowsy from lack of sleep will be far worse than driving after alcohol consumption. Hence, the authors develop a driving simulator using Java to modify the control and rules of “OpenDS” application in order to simulate and calculate the automatic “ReactionTest” for 25 respondents simulating in both normal conditions and sleepy conditions when driving. Through this study, the authors obtained that the difference of driving performance in terms of reaction rate when driving the car in sleep deprivation condition and the normal condition is equal to 1.08 seconds. The results also shown that the risk of loss of control that can occur to the driver of the car in units of meters (m), is equal to 0.3024 x the car's speed. This study aims to reduce the number of traffic accidents caused by sleep deprivation that occur in society by giving a recommendation to the driver that forced to drive in lack of sleep condition. In top of that, the authors propose to create an understanding for changing the social habits of driving toward a better way.