Analysis of driver behavior when the brake and gas pedals are pressed incorrectly

Abstract

In the natural sciences, a common methodology is to observe phenomena, formulate a hypothesis, and verify it. However, human errors such as pedal mis-operation occur very infrequently, making it difficult to apply this methodology. Therefore, we established a method to artificially generate a pedal mis-operation situation on a driving simulator, and acquired video and driving data. In this paper, we extracted driver features from the accumulated data and investigated them. The results showed that aging slows down the transition from gas pedal mis-operation to correct brake operation. It was also found that the influence of driving frequency and gender was small. Furthermore, decision tree analysis was used to analyze the driver features that allow the driver to operate the brakes correctly even if there is a gas pedal mis-operation.