Analyzing the Effects of Driving Experience on Prebraking Behaviors Based on Data Collected by Motion Capture Devices

The prebraking-related actions typically studied are the main maneuvers carried out to avoid collision. Especially for those braking actions taken when turning or parking, accidents often occur because of human errors such as the incorrect choice of pedal. However, regarding these daily braking-related driving behaviors, the effects of the driver characteristics, such as driving experience and gender, on the prebraking behaviors remain unknown. Therefore, defining prebraking behaviors as the movements of a driver’s body before his or her foot touches the brake pedal, this paper identifies the details of drivers’ driving behaviors while prebraking by analyzing the data collected from a wearable high-precision 23-joint motion capture device and further confirms the effects of driver experience, gender and stature on these behaviors. According to two-way analyses of variance (ANOVAs) that were performed on 100 sets of motion data collected from a set of driving experiments involving two different tasks, drivers perform similar prebraking body actions even under different braking scenarios. Moreover, the results of an interaction effects analysis confirmed the impact of drivers’ experiences, gender and stature on their prebraking actions. The results of this study can serve as guidelines for future self-driving and advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) development and provide useful insights for the identification and training of new drivers.