Driver's reaction time under emergency braking a car - Research in a driving simulator

The paper presents results of research on the reaction time of drivers of motor vehicles in case of accident risk. These studies have been conducted in an autoPW driving simulator - research project N509 016 31/1251. During a simulated pre-accident situation, a test driver, as he was trying to avoid a collision with an obstacle, has been forced to perform a braking manoeuvre. 107 people of different age and driving experience have been studied. Various scenarios describing risk situations (the speed of a car driven by a tested driver, the distance between the vehicles at the initial moment) have been considered.Reaction times were determined at the controls of the vehicle and they have been presented in a time to collision function. The presented results provide important information on the analysed subject (for instance reaction time dependence on risk time). They have also confirmed the usefulness of this type of simulation studies in connection with the possibility of fairly accurate reproduction of the environment appearance and an event scenario in relation to possible real situations.