The Effects of Driving Experience on the P300 Event-Related Potential during the Perception of Traffic Scenes.

Keiichiro Inagaki,Sou Nobukawa,Nobuhiko Wagatsuma

doi:10.3390/ijerph181910396

Abstract

The incidence of human-error-related traffic collisions is markedly reduced among drivers who have few years of driving experience compared with those with little driving experience or fewer driving opportunities, even if they have a driver’s license. This study analyzes the effect of driving experience on the perception of the traffic scenes through electroencephalograms (EEGs). Primarily, we focused on visual attention during driving, the essential visual function in the visual search and human gaze, and evaluated the P300, which is involved in attention, to explore the effect of driving experience on the visual attention of traffic scenes, not for improving visual ability. In the results, the P300 response was observed in both experienced and beginner drivers when they paid visual attention to the visual target. Furthermore, the latency for the peak amplitude of the P300 response among experienced drivers was markedly faster than that in beginner drivers, suggesting that the P300 latency is a piece of crucial information for driving experience on visual attention.

Highlights

Traffic collisions globally remain a critical social problem [1]
Our study focused on the P300 event-related potential, which is associated with attention [47,48,49,50,51,52,53,54,55], and investigated whether P300 could be used as a measure of brain activity in a driver reflecting driving experience during the perception of traffic scenes and the response to a stimulus
We focused on the relationship between attention and the P300 event-related potential to investigate the effects of driving experience on response characteristics

Summary

Introduction

Traffic collisions globally remain a critical social problem [1]. The technology underlying intelligent transportation systems (ITS) has dramatically developed and become widespread in the last few years. Several factors contribute to the occurrence of traffic accidents, including road infrastructure, vehicle systems, pedestrians, and interactions among these factors, including human error [3,4,5]. Human errors, such as misrecognition and poor driving performance, represent a primary underlying cause of traffic collisions [6,7,8,9,10,11]. Understanding the effects of driving experience on the visual attention of traffic scenes is essential for reducing traffic collisions related to human visual function

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion