Driving Behaviors in Cognitive Agents: Preliminary Results of an Experimental Approach

Understanding driving behavior is critical for enhancing road safety, optimizing insurance, healthcare costs, and informing the development of mobility services and advanced vehicle systems. Driving remains a high-risk daily activity, influenced by a complex interplay of psychological, cognitive, and contextual factors such as stress, impulsivity, risk perception, and environmental conditions. To address this complexity, this research empirically investigated a broad range of psychological and behavioral aspects of driving through a combined methodology involving standardized psychometric surveys and high-fidelity driving simulation. The experimental setup integrates wearable biometric sensors to monitor psycho-physiological responses under varying levels of cognitive load and environmental complexity. Findings will inform the development of cognitively enriched software agents, enabling more realistic agent-based traffic simulations capturing both vehicle dynamics and the psychological dimensions of driving behavior. Preliminary results, mainly aimed to verify the correctness of the experimental design, are presented and discussed to assess the capability of reproducing nuanced driving behaviors within agent-based traffic simulations to enhance their ecological validity, adaptability, and predictive accuracy.