John H. Richardson

The influence of alarm timing on driver response to collision warning systems following system failure

This driving simulator study focuses on false and missing alarms produced by a forward collision warning system and estimates the effect of alarm timing on driver response to alarm malfunction from the perspective of driver trust in alarms. The results show that drivers who experience late alarms are reluctant to respond to a false alarm and are not influenced by a missed alarm; however, drivers who experience early alarms tend to respond to a false alarm and suffer a delayed response to critical situations when a missing alarm happens. Furthermore, drivers whose judgement of trust is relatively high, tend to exhibit delayed braking, compared with drivers that have lower levels of trust. Driver behaviour towards false and missed alarms may vary according to alarm timing and its influence on trust in alarms; moreover, impaired system effectiveness caused by alarm malfunction may be mitigated by manipulating alarm timing.

The Human Factors of Collision Warning Systems: System Performance, Alarm Timing, and Driver Trust

This driving simulator study focuses on false and missing alarms produced by a forward collision warning system and estimates the effect of alarm timing on driver response to alarm malfunction from the perspective of driver trust. The results show that drivers who experience late alarms are reluctant to respond to a false alarm and are not influenced by a missing alarm, however drivers who experience early alarms tend to respond to a false alarm and suffer a delayed response to critical situations following a missing alarm. Furthermore, drivers whose judgement of trust is relatively high, tend to exhibit delayed braking, compared with drivers who have lower levels of trust. These results suggest that driver behaviour towards false and missing alarms may vary according to alarm timing and its influence on trust in alarms, moreover there is a possibility that the negative effects of alarm malfunction may be mitigated by manipulating alarm timing.

Reset to Zero and Specify Active Safety Systems according to Real-World Needs

Emergency brake assist, adaptive cruise control, and alternative instantiations of intelligent vehicle control systems aspire to support the driver in controlling the vehicle and alleviate the incidents that would lead to collisions and injury. This paper resets to zero and based on data from the on-the-spot accident study challenges the capability of active safety systems to aim at the sources of longitudinal control failures. The road user interactions file from 3,024 road accidents in Thames Valley and Nottinghamshire in U.K. was analyzed. Interactions where “failure to stop” or “sudden braking” is the precipitating factor are analyzed and the main contributory factors are identified. Some of those factors are addressed by current and coming technologies—such as low road friction, excessive speed, and close following, but other common ones are significantly neglected—such as distraction, failure to judge other person’s path, failure to look, and “look, but did not see” instances.

The impact of verbal interaction on driver lateral control: an experimental assessment

Driver distraction is acknowledged as one of the key contributors to driver accidents (Treat, J.R., et al., 1977. Tri-level study of the causes of traffic accidents (No. DOT-HS-034‐535‐77-TAC(1)). Bloomington, IN: Institute for Research in Public Safety – Indiana University; Knipling, R.R., et al., 1993. Assessment of IVHS countermeasures for collision avoidance: Rear-end crashes (No. DOT HS 807 995). Washington, DC: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration). As driving is mainly considered a visual task (Wierwille, W.W., 1993. Visual and manual demands of in-car controls and displays. In: B. Peakock and W. Karwowski, eds. Automotive ergonomics. London: Taylor and Francis, 229–320) the use of auditory channels for interacting with intelligent vehicle systems has been suggested as a solution to possible visual overload. This article presents two studies which assess the potential impact of distraction caused by verbal interaction on the driving task. The first study used a low-cost, game-based, simulation and the second study used the same experimental design with a generic driving simulation, the Lane Change Task (Mattes, S., 2003. The lane change task as a tool for driver distraction evaluation. In: H. Strasser, H. Rascher, and H. Bubb, eds. Quality of work and products in enterprises of the future. Stuttgart: Ergonomia Verlag, 57–60). Twenty-four young adults, 12 males and 12 females, participated in the first study and 12 young adults, 6 males and 6 females, in the second study. Road departures, time/speed and subjective workload were the measures in the first study, while the second study used mean course-departure and subjective workload as dependent variables. The results indicated that game-based simulation can be a solution when realism is needed but resources are limited, and suggested that concurrent verbal interaction may impair lateral vehicle control.