Negative Effects of Visual Distraction on Traffic Accidents

This study analyzes the relationship between the time of visual distraction for a driver, which can be defined as taking one’s eye away from the forward driving view, and the probability of traffic accidents. Using a driving simulator, we investigated the evasive reaction time of 22 drivers to risky events under a visual distraction. We subsequently analyzed the correlation between the evasive reaction time and the occurrence probability of rear-end collision and lane-deviation collision using a statistical probabilistic model, which can quantify the risk of traffic accidents. Based on this relationship, the possibility of reducing the evasive reaction time using a distraction alarm was investigated in order to minimize the probability of collision. The results demonstrate that reducing the distraction time and thus the evasive reaction time below 1.0 s effectively reduced the probability of a rear-end collision to one third compared with the probability without using an alarm system. Moreover, this system was also effective against collisions resulting from lane deviation.