In recent years, the number of elderly people who have driver's licenses is increasing along with the increasing aging rate of society, and this trend is expected to continue in the future. Relating to this, there is a possibility that accidents caused by erroneous pedal stepping by elderly drivers may increase. While the recent development of automated driving technology and advanced car safety technology can greatly contribute to the reduction of accidents, it takes a long time before vehicles with these technologies are implemented on the roads. Therefore, accident preventive measures have to be considered in tandem with the development of the aforementioned technologies. In this research, we focus on the pedal work of elderly drivers that will be elaborated later. The purpose is to measure and analyze the pedal work during sudden braking, and clarify the cause of accidents. For this purpose, we developed a driving simulator combining virtual reality technology, motion capture technology and head mounted display. Furthermore, by setting virtual pedestrians to jump out suddenly in our experiment setup, we were able to study the characteristics of elderly drivers by analyzing the behaviors of young and elderly drivers when avoiding accidents. The pedal work when a driver brakes is composed of three steps, namely “release the foot from the accelerator”, “move the foot to the brake” and “step on the brake”. In this thesis, “the time it took the driver to release his foot from the accelerator after the pedestrian jumped into the roadway”, “the time it took the driver to move his foot from the accelerator to the brake” and “total locomotion length of the driver’s right big toe for 10 seconds after the pedestrian starts crossing” were investigated.
As a result, it was revealed that the ratio of avoidance by braking rather than steering tends to be as high as 60% for elderly people compared to 43% for young people. In addition, the pedal work of elderly at the time of sudden braking was slow and unstable. From the above, we conclude that pedal work which is unsuitable for the vehicle speed is a factor of accidents.
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