I am in the National Advanced Driving Simulator at the University of Iowa.
It's used to test drivers' reactions in a controlled, repeatable environment
and also to test things that would be unsafe in the real world.
- Tom's currently in the simulator, undergoing a study
to look at driver response to unintended acceleration.
The vehicle is going to accelerate quickly
without any input from Tom, as if it were malfunctioning.
Tom's going to have to identify that this event is going on
and press the brake very quickly to bring the car under control.
GPS: Turn left at the next intersection.
Whoa...
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
That was terrifying!
But there's a question I want to answer here.
Recently, I did a video while driving.
And it was on a dead straight road with very little traffic,
and I always felt in control of the vehicle. But was I?
Is it actually dangerous to talk into a camera while driving?
So, I'm going to spend 15 minutes in this simulator, distracted,
trying to give this monologue to that camera.
And I'm also going to spend 15 minutes in here, not distracted
just driving, and putting my full attention on the road,
and the team here are going to analyse my results
and tell me how I've done.
And given I was just doing 35 in a 25, probably not that great.
- The National Advanced Driving Simulator was built to recreate
the most realistic driving experience possible anywhere.
It has a real vehicle cab in it.
We can swap different vehicle cabs, in and out.
The motion base can travel 64 feet in the X and Y directions
and these are basically steel belts that are connected to
large drives on either end and then,
the hexapod portion of the simulator is hydraulic,
that allows us to experience roll, pitch and yaw.
We also have a turntable that can turn 330 degrees in either direction.
Overall, it has 13 independent degrees of freedom.
We have absolute control of what time of day it is.
We have control over the weather and traffic.
- And yes, the graphics might not be up to modern video game standards,
but after a few minutes in here, with all the motion,
your brain just accepts that you're driving.
- Very broadly, we are interested in studying the relation
between the driver and the vehicle to improve safety,
so that encompasses things like driver impairment, driver drowsiness,
distraction or intoxication. So we bring drivers in,
actually give them a large dose of alcohol,
get them in the simulator and we can see how they perform.
We've also compared that to things like cannabis,
so some of the first studies with cannabis and driving
have been done in the simulator here as well.
As Tom is driving in the simulator, talking to the video camera,
I would expect to see him missing certain information in the driving scene.
Generally, we find that interactions that take the
driver's eyes off the road tend to be the worst but,
even in situations where the driver's looking straight ahead,
if their attention is pulled to another task, like talking to a video camera,
that can also increase distraction and cause the driver to miss certain things.
If the driver crashes, they essentially move through
the vehicle or the pedestrian that they collided with,
so, we don't simulate the dynamics of the crash,
but we are recording that they crashed.
We know the velocity of that crash.
We know how severe that crash would have been.
- So, how did I do?
- About as well as we would have predicted.
Let me pull up an example, here.
A vehicle is going to drive through an intersection.
You actually have the red stop sign.
- Yeah, I didn't see the stop sign, did I?
- Completely missed it.
- Whoa, just did not see that.
The thing is, I'm actually looking at the road, there.
I'm actually... but I'm not thinking about the road,
because I'm too busy thinking about what my next line is.
- Exactly, we would call this inattentional blindness.
This is when your attention is off the road,
even though your eyes are there.
You're missing information that's out in the environment.
- Wow.
- So, we saw quite a bit of swerving at the beginning of your drive,
you had some trouble controlling your speed.
You were going about 35 through a 25 school zone.
Textbook case of distracted driving.
- So, I basically, shouldn't film while driving.
- Generally speaking, yes.
- Thank you so much. - Thank you.
- Thank you so much to everyone at the
National Advanced Driving Simulator at the University of Iowa.
Pull down the description or click the link on screen for more about them.
All the pedestrians here are just suicidal. All of them.
This is not a stop sign. I can just take this.
Whoa, no I can't. You're coming in from the right.
Probably shouldn't check my phone while I'm driving.