Abstract:

A reallife vehicle driving test involving 10 drivers is conducted to study the physiological load characteristics of the drivers when passing through the entrance or exit of an extralong tunnel. Several physiological indexes, such as the pupil area, heart rate, and respiratory rate of the drivers, are collected using eye trackers and physiological instruments. The entrance and exit of the tunnel are divided into four sections, i.e. the inner and outer sections of the entrance and inner and outer sections of the exit. The singlefactor analysis of variance is employed to test the significance of the differences in various physiological indexes of the drivers while passing through the different sections of the entrance and exit of the tunnel. Using the results of the analysis, a fuzzy evaluation scheme based on entropy method is used to quantify the overall physiological load of the drivers when passing through the different sections. Results demonstrate the following: (1) The indexes of the pupil area, heart rate, and respiratory rate of the drivers are all significantly different when the drivers pass through the different sections of the extralong tunnel. The overall physiological load of the drivers at the inner section of the entrance obtained through the fuzzy evaluation scheme is the largest, followed by that at the inner section of the exit, whereas those at the outer sections of the entrance and exit are relatively small. (2) The drivers′ dark adaptation distance in the extralong tunnel is longer than the length of the threshold zone specified in the code, which decreases driving safety.

Key words: extralong tunnel, entrance and exit; physiological load, driving safety, real vehicle test