Distracted driving has reached an unhealthy level in the United States. Whether it is from talking on the phone, texting, or other reasons, studies have found that distracted driving has led to a large number of accidents in the past several years. Honda just announced a partnership with Ohio State University to develop a Driving Simulator Laboratory. The purpose of the partnership is to support advanced research into distracted driving issues and driver behavior that affects safety on the roads.
The laboratory will be delving deep into driver behavior by monitoring a number of variables. Biometric sensors will measure factors like heart rate, eye movement, blood pressure, galvanic skin response, respiration, heart and blink rates, among others. These will allow experts to better understand what is actually going on with a person’s overall body and state of mind while driving.
“This is something of a different approach to understanding, at a deeper level, the driver’s state and how people interact with the vehicle,” said Honda R&D Americas Chief Engineer Steven Feit.
This study goes beyond previous efforts in the field by looking at the psychological and cognitive aspects of what a driver is going through while actually driving. The hope is that this will one day be able to lead to more attentive drivers and ultimately less accidents being attributed to distracted driving.
As the leading 
