Stress State of Driver: Mobile Phone Use While Driving

The use of mobile phone is increasing during driving in China. Due to the mobile phone use while driving, traffic accidents in emergency increase. This study concerns how commonly mobile phone is used and what stress state and behavior drivers have when driving. The stress state is defined and physiological traits of driver stress are gathered by Polygraph. The indoor experiment was made in the driving simulator system, with the heart rate and respiratory rate as physiological indicators. The reliability of indicators was studied. The simulator system loaded designed dangerous scenes before the experiment and participants were divided into two groups, i.e. mobile phone use group and no mobile phone use group. All the participants reported that they were worse drivers and had wrong maneuvers in the stress state. When using mobile phone in driving, they usually did not pay attention to surrounding conditions and couldn't perceive emergency. The results showed that the heart rate and respiratory rate sharply increased when the dangerous traffic accident happened. The heart rate and respiratory rate are higher than no-mobile phone use group. The use of mobile phone while driving increased the stress state of driver and then the precautionary measures were discussed. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.