Research On Drivers’ Neck Fatigue Of Prairie Highway

The highway traffic system consists of people, vehicle, road and environment, and drivers, as the core element within it, are susceptible to be influenced, for example, monotonous environment would easily lead to drivers’ fatigue with decreasing ability to gaze, perceive and react, which poses a serious threat to the whole traffic safety. Prairie highways have typical characteristics, such as numerous flat curves, less traffic volume, simple structure and monotonous scenery, etc. The low switching frequency and less visual stimulus when driving on grassland highway with maintaining a long-period position bring about oppression and tension of drivers’muscle, bad blood circulation, lack of oxygen, and all of them may result in muscle fatigue, and increase the possibility of accident. However, there is limited effort being devoted to research on fatigue of driver muscle of prairie highway.Based on previous studies, typical grassland highway alignments in Inner Mongolia have been chosen to detect sternocleidomastoid muscle signals by using the MP150 multi-channel physiological recorder, and then by using time domain and frequency domain analysis methods, the integral EMG (iEMG) and median frequency (MF) value are obtained to evaluating of drivers’ fatigue level, relationship between EMG signal and driving time also can be summarized through the evaluation. In the light of validity verification of heart rate variability to evaluate muscle fatigue level, as well as subjective questionnaire survey, the mental status of driver fatigue can be described vividly in order to prevent driving fatigue in grassland highway scientific and reasonably.Through the analysis above, conclusions can be summed up as followings:(1) Drivers’ muscle signals are significantly associated with driving time, long-period driving is presented with increasing iEMG and decreasing MF, that means the conduction velocity of the muscle fiber becomes lower, which easily results in muscle fatigue, even traffic accidents. To improve drivers’ safety on prairie highway, the running time should be limited to 50 min as a recommendations in order to prevent muscle fatigue.(2) Factors such as gender. age, driving experience, driving skills, personality will lead to different degrees of fatigue. Women, due to the physiological and physical conditions, are more likely than to be tired:And young drivers show to be more fatiguable than old drivers because of lack of driving experience.(3) Drivers’ neck muscles fatigue analysis results was validated by using the subjective questionnaire survey and heart rate variability index, the results demonstrate that there are individual differences of drivers while driving in prairie highway. Experienced drivers generally tend to make effective adjustment to relieve themselves, while less-experienced drivers keep highly concentration on the road conditions, which leads to stiffness and fatigue throughout the body, and all of them have tremendous consequences for traffic safety. The conclusion in conformity with the neck muscle fatigue analysis results.