Before older drivers stop driving, there are transitional periods of restricted driving during which they do not drive on unfamiliar roads or roads that are difficult to drive, presumably of high workload. By knowing the workload associated with a particular route (from historic and existing datasets) and some assessment of the ability of a particular older individual to drive in certain situations (determined using a simulator), drivers could decide which of several routes they should drive, and if they should drive at all. The workload estimates could be a function added in next generation in-vehicle navigation systems or part of the directions calculation in Google maps. Using a driving simulator, this project is intended to answer several questions. How does driving performance degrade with increased workload? How well do the subjective and objective workload estimates from previous UMTRI work agree with each other? What are the differences between men and women on these measures?

Principal Investigator: Paul A. Green (UMTRI)
Co-Investigators: Mark Newman (U-M School of Information) and Toshiro Muramatsu (Nissan Technical Center North America)

Use the following links to watch a 5-minute wrap-up video about the project:
The first two versions were designed to work with Windows Media Player (WMP), if they do not open correctly, please right click, then save the file, and open it with WMP.

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     Quicktime/iTunes: Small