Driving Simulator Use for Pre-Crash Tests

This paper presents the first experiment managed as part of the Sciences and Technologies for Safety in Transport (ST2) program, a French national research project. In this program, human physical reactions are studied in order to adapt primary and secondary safety systems to driver behavior. The objective of the present study was to examine how car drivers modify their posture just prior to a frontal impact (pre-crash) and to use the resulting data to model possible anticipatory postural changes using a digital human model. The experiment was conducted with 35 subjects using SHERPA, the driving simulator at the LAMIH research lab. After a short training session, during which the subjects were allowed to familiarize themselves with the simulator, all subjects were asked to complete a 50-kilometer run, in which the last traffic situation was a pre-crash situation. Reactions to this pre-crash situation show that the simulated crash was realistic: all subjects swerved immediately, and then experienced feelings of nervous agitation. Further data shows that none of the subjects was in the standard driving position at the time of the crash, and that the movements made to control the situation put the subjects into risky positions.