抄録
This paper proposes a method for evaluating driver stress using a motor-vehicle driving simulator and a biomarker as an index of stress. Software has been developed, which can deliberately control driving tasks, in addition to analyzing driving information, such as frequency of the use of accelerator and/or brakes and the degree of deviation from the driving course. Sympathetic nervous activity was noninvasively evaluated using a hand-held monitor of salivary amylase activity, which chemically measured a biomarker every few minutes. Using healthy 20 female adults, the appropriateness of the proposed method was evaluated in vivo. The experimental results showed that the driving stress might be caused to the drivers in only 20 minutes by adding more severe driving tasks than normally experienced by the subjects without endangering them. Furthermore, the result indicate that frequent measurements of sympathetic nervous activity were possible without putting the subjects under restraint by using salivary amylase activity as the index.
