Capturing the Effects of Moderate Fatigue on Driver Performance

There is no doubt that fatigue plays an important role in driver performance and potential crashes. One way to understand the effects of fatigue on driving performance that has not been rigorously explored is to use cognitive modeling as a performance predictor. In this paper, we integrate existing models of driving and fatigue to make a general model of driving under the influence of moderate fatigue, caused by repeated bouts of nighttime driving. Empirical studies on the effects of moderate fatigue have shown that it affects two measures of performance: steering variability and lane variability. Moderate fatigue also tends to have an effect on night-shift conditions but not on day-shift conditions due to circadian rhythms. We describe our integrated model of a moderately fatigued driver and we analyze the model’s performance in the context of a recent study of driving under conditions of moderate fatigue.