Eleftheria Kyriakouli, “Analysis of the impact of nighttime driving to young drivers’ behavior and safety in rural roads with the use of driving simulator”, Diploma Thesis, NTUA, School of Civil Engineering, Athens, November 2017.

This Diploma Thesis aims to analyze the impact of nighttime driving on driver behavior and safety in rural areas. In order to achieve this objective an experimental process on a driving simulator was carried out, in which all participants drove in different driving scenarios in a rural road. Regression statistical models were developed to analyze the impact of driving at night on the mean speed (lognormal), on the mean headway distance of the vehicle and the mean reaction time (linear) and on the probability of causing an accident (binary logistic). The models’ application demonstrated that nighttime driving leads to small decrease of the mean speed and increase of the mean headway distance of the vehicle, which however cannot outweigh the increase of the mean reaction time in case of an accident and therefore resulting to an increase of accident probability.