Citation

Rashevsky N. Bull. Math. Biophys. 1966; 28(4): 645-654.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1966, Mathmatical Biology)

DOI

10.1007/BF02476866

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Following previous studies, differential equations are established which determine the variation of the stimulus towards a corrective turn of the steering wheel and its effect on the excitation of the centers in the brain which results in the production of the corrective turn. The equations are derived under the highly oversimplified assumption that all excitation thresholds are so small that they can be neglected. Under these assumptions it is found that the tracking curve of a car is a sinusoid with negative damping, that is, with an ever increasing amplitude. Driving under these assumptions is imposible since the car will always eventually jump off the road. The possible effects of the threshold as well as stimuli towards corrective turns other than the distance from the edge of the lane are very briefly discussed. In spite of the negative results of the paper, its interest lies in the circumstance that with the complication of the model, we find that driving depends not only on the reaction times as the only "purely biological" parameter, but on three other neurobiophysical constants. In a subsequent paper (Rashevsky, 1967) it is shown how the introduction of one or more purely biological parameters of the driver makes a stable driving regime possible.


Keywords: Driver distraction;

Language: en