HEAVY VEHICLE DRIVER WORKLOAD ASSESSMENT. TASK 6: BASELINE DATA STUDY

This report consists of an empirical establishment of heavy vehicle driver baseline performance data. Researchers interested in highway safety have called out the need for rudimentary workload data so that they might have a basis for comparison of workload associated with particular in-cab high technology devices. Thirty professional drivers participated and were asked to perform a series of tasks during over-the-road drives involving both open road driving and close car following in both day and night conditions. The requested tasks included looking at right and left mirrors, adjusting CB volume, changing CB frequency, manually tuning the radio, adjusting radio volume, reading clock, reading air pressure, adjusting the heating or air conditioning, and calculating available driving hours. Drivers were measured with respect to visual allocation; steering, accelerator, and brake inputs; speed and headway maintenance; and lanekeeping. Results indicated that, to a varying degree, visual allocation measures, several steering measures, speed variance, and several lane position measures are preferable measures for further workload assessment.