The impact of roadside landscape colors on driver's mean heart rate considering driving time

- The impact of roadside landscape colors on driver's MHR is quantified.
- A relationship model between driving time, landscape colors and MHR was proposed.
- Landscape colors are negatively correlated with the MHR.
- Driving time is positively correlated with the MHR.
- MHR is more sensitive to driving time than landscape colors.

This paper quantifies the impact of driving time and roadside landscape colors on the driver's mean heart rate (MHR). The data used in the paper was collected based on real vehicle experiments conducted on Jilin-Hunchun freeway, China. A texture analysis algorithm is implemented to segment roadside landscape images, where the K-means clustering method is applied to extract color values of images. Models of relationships between the driving time, landscape colors, and MHR are developed respectively. To study the impact of both driving time and landscape colors on the MHR, an integrated model is proposed. Landscape colors and driving time are used as independent variables to explain the MHR. The level of sensitivity of the MHR to landscape colors and driving time is studied using the single factor sensitive analysis. The paper shows that landscape colors are negatively correlated with the MHR, where with increase in color brightness the passive fatigue level of the driver decreases. Driving time is positively correlated with the MHR, where with increase in driving time the MHR increases as well, implying that the active fatigue level of the driver becomes worse. It is also found that the MHR is more sensitive to driving time than landscape colors. The paper represents a fundamental study of the models of drivers' fatigue levels and landscape colors, which can improve the design of roadside landscapes.