Effects of age and different road workload on driver's situation awareness

The age distribution is rapidly aging in Taiwan, which also leads the proportion of elderly driver increases. According to the past studies, the elderly driver caused a much more serious damage than others when there is a traffic accident. Therefore, this study explores the relationship between situation awareness (SA) and driving performance when there are driving emergencies at different driving road workload on elderly drivers. A total number of 44 subjects were recruited to perform driving simulation, which includes 22 senior citizens and 22 young people. This experiment evaluates driver's situation awareness statues by their verbal answer situation to Situation Awareness Global Assessment Technique (SAGAT) questions. The study showed that the age had an effect on situation awareness. The elderly driver had a poor situation awareness ability than young people.