Study on response time measurement of distracted driving by virtual reality driving simulator

For safe driving, drivers should always keep their eyes on the road ahead and focus on driving. However, many drivers engage in other activities while driving, such as using mobile phones. The development of information technology and vehicle automation has led to rapid expansion in the control interfaces of automobiles, which in turn has led to increases in incidents of distracted driving. A number of studies have been conducted to measure and inform these risks, among which the visual occlusion test, lane change test, and detection response rate tests are widely used. However, each of these methods has many problems such as the risk of actual vehicle driving and deterioration of immersion due to simulated driving. As an alternative, a virtual reality (VR) driving simulator is proposed. This simulator improves immersion and also includes a method to detect response time by extracting the log data automatically during the driving test. The VR driving simulator proposed in this paper is expected to improve immersion and cost effectiveness of simulated driving. In addition, the VR simulator provides automatic objective data to measure driving distraction and a safe testing environment compared to actual road driving tests.