Road traffic accidents resulting from alcohol-impaired driving are increasing globally despite several measures, currently in place, to curb the trend. For this reason, recent research aims at integrating alcohol early-detection systems and driving simulator experiments to identify intoxicated drivers. However, driving simulator experiments on drunk driving have focused mostly on male participants than female drivers whose characteristics have scarcely been explored.
Hence in this paper, vehicle dynamic control inputs on steering, braking, and acceleration performance of 75 licensed female drivers with an upshot of alcohol at four different blood alcohol concentration (BAC) levels (0%, 0.03%, 0.05%, and 0.08%) were investigated. The participants completed simulated driving in a fixed-based simulator experiment coupled with real-time ecological scenarios to extract discrete responses. Vehicle dynamic characteristics data were obtained as signatures to alcohol detection based on the heterogeneous environmental settings, drivers’ state, and driver-vehicle control input variables.
The results of the vehicle dynamics models showed that alcohol significantly impairs the driver steering control. For the 0.03, 0.05, and 0.08% BAC levels, mean acceleration values increased by 0.035, 0.045 and 0.053 m/s2, mean steered wheel angle of participants increased by 0.048, 0.082, and 0.160 degrees, and the increments according to the case of mean brake pedal force, were from 0.169N, 0.372N and 1.131N compared to baseline (0% BAC) state, respectively.
Overall, the results revealed that drivers exerted excessive force on all control variables (steering, braking, and acceleration) which deteriorated their driving performance. The research outcome has the potential to deliver a benchmark countermeasure study and enhance stakeholders’ decisions against alcohol-impaired driving among female drivers.