Are driving simulators effective tools for evaluating novice drivers’ hazard anticipation,speed management,and attention maintenance skills?

Novice drivers (teen drivers with their solo license for 6 months or less) are at a greatly inflated risk of crashing. Post hoc analyses of police accident reports indicate that novice drivers fail to anticipate hazards, manage their speed, and maintain attention. These skills are much too broadly defined to be of much help in training. Recently, however, driving simulators have been used to identify those skills which differentiate the novice drivers from older, more experienced drivers in the areas of hazard anticipation and speed management. Below, we report an experiment on a driving simulator which compares novice and experienced drivers’ performance in the third area believed to contribute especially heavily to crashes among novice drivers: attention to the forward roadway. The results indicate that novice drivers are much more willing to glance for long periods of time inside the vehicle than are experienced drivers. Interestingly, the results also indicate that both novice and experienced drivers spend equal amounts of time glancing at tasks external to the vehicle and in the periphery. Moreover, just as a program has been designed to train the scanning skills that clearly differentiate novice from experienced drivers, one might hope that a training program could be designed to improve the attention maintenance skills of novice drivers. We report on the initial piloting of just such a training program. Finally, we address a question that has long been debated in the literature: Do the results from driving simulators generalize to the real world? We argue that in the case of hazard anticipation, speed management, and attention maintenance the answer is yes.     

Driver responses to motorcycle and lead vehicle braking events: The effects of motorcycling experience and novice versus experienced drivers

In many countries, motorcyclists are over-represented in traffic collision fatalities and injuries compared to vehicle registrations. Why drivers may violate the right-of-way of motorcyclists traveling as lead vehicles in front of drivers is empirically examined in two studies that were conducted with a moderate-fidelity driving simulator. The purpose of the first study was to determine if drivers, who also held a motorcycle license (N = 16), drove cars differently than regular drivers (N = 16) around motorcycles. The two groups did not differ on responses to motorcycling braking events, which was consistent with previous research on car following. The second study compared the driving performance of sixteen novice teenage drivers (M = 16.2 years of age) to 15 experienced drivers (M = 32.9) over the span of six monthly simulator sessions. Novice drivers’ perception response times (PRT) to the braking events were significantly longer than those of the experienced drivers. PRTs to motorcycle and lead vehicle braking events decreased over sessions. For all participants, PRTs to the motorcycle events were longer than to the car events. The implications of these results for motorcyclists and drivers with different levels of experience are discussed.     

Driving experience, attentional focusing, and the recall of recently inspected events

How does a driver’s perception of roadway events change with experience? A laboratory study addressed this question by comparing novice and experienced drivers as they watched video recordings taken from a moving vehicle. While watching the recordings, the drivers had their eye movements monitored. When the recording was paused, memory for immediately prior events was tested, and recall performance related to what the viewer had been inspecting. The recordings were taken from a vehicle as it travelled along a series of roads, and questions were asked about other road users and about roadway features. The experiment asked about the relationship between driving experience and attentional capture, and about the recall of events recently seen. What attracted attention were objects of central interest such as other road users appearing close to the camera, and moving objects. When the memory test was administered immediately after a hazardous event had occurred, such as a pedestrian stepping into the path of the camera vehicle, then there was evidence of attentional focussing and reduced availability of details about incidental objects. Recall performance generally reflected the pattern of eye fixations, but viewers did not always recall details about fixated objects, and were sometimes able to recall information about objects that were not fixated. Experienced drivers recalled more of the incidental events than the novices, but they were similar in their recall of central events. This supports the association between driving experience and the extent of the effective perceptual field.     

Cross-cultural effects on detecting multiple sources of driving hazard: Evidence from the deceleration detection flicker test

Collision rates in Malaysia are much higher than the UK; do these reflect poorer hazard perception skill or does exposure to hazardous events improve hazard detection ability? The deceleration detection flicker test (DDFT) was used to investigate the effect of experience and cross-cultural differences between Malaysian and UK drivers in their ability to detect the deceleration of a lead vehicle while simultaneously identifying any secondary hazards in side roads. Matched groups of participants with lower or higher levels of experience were recruited from the University of Nottingham in the UK and Malaysia. Malaysian drivers were significantly less accurate than UK drivers in detecting the deceleration of lead vehicles on urban roads, and significantly less accurate in detecting the presence of secondary hazards across all road types. Experienced drivers were significantly faster than novices in detecting decelerations of the lead vehicle, and were significantly more accurate in detecting the presence of secondary hazards. The study concludes that high exposure to hazardous events on the road in Malaysia does not yield expertise in this hazard perception task, although the DDFT does differentiate experience cross-culturally.     

What attracts attention during police pursuit driving?

Efficient deployment of attention is important to the safe execution of tasks with a high content of visual information, such as driving. Chasing a lead vehicle is an extremely demanding and dangerous task, though little is known of the visual skills required. A study is reported that recorded the eye movements of police drivers and two control groups (novices and age‐ and experienced‐ matched controls) while watching a series of video clips of driving. The clips included pursuits, emergency response drives, and control drives (at normal speeds) around Nottinghamshire, UK. Analysis of gaze durations within certain categories of stimuli revealed that daytime pursuit drives correspond with an increase in gaze durations on a lead car (controlled for exposure), though police drivers direct their attention to other sources of potential hazards, such as pedestrians, more so than other drivers. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The development of hazard perception: Dissociation of visual orientation and hazard processing

Eye movements are a key behavior for visual information processing in traffic situations and for vehicle control. Previous research showed that effective ways of eye guidance are related to better hazard perception skills. Furthermore, hazard perception is reported to be faster for experienced drivers as compared to novice drivers. However, little is known whether this difference can be attributed to the development of visual orientation, or hazard processing. In the present study, we compared eye movements of 20 inexperienced and 20 experienced drivers in a hazard perception task. We separately measured (a) the interval between the onset of a static hazard scene and the first fixation on a potential hazard, and (b) the interval between the first fixation on a potential hazard and the final response. While overall RT was faster for experienced compared to inexperienced drivers, the scanning patterns revealed that this difference was due to faster processing after the initial fixation on the hazard, whereas scene scanning times until the initial fixation on the hazard did not differ between groups.     

Driving on familiar roads: Automaticity and inattention blindness

This paper describes our research into the processes that govern driver attention and behavior in familiar, well-practiced situations. The experiment examined the effects of extended practice on inattention blindness and detection of changes to the driving environment in a high-fidelity driving simulator. Participants were paid to drive a simulated road regularly over 3 months of testing. A range of measures, including detection task performance and driving performance, were collected over the course of 20 sessions. Performance from a yoked Control Group who experienced the same road scenarios in a single session was also measured. The data showed changes in what drivers reported noticing indicative of inattention blindness, and declining ratings of mental demand suggesting that many participants were “driving without awareness”. Extended practice also resulted in increased sensitivity for detecting changes to road features associated with vehicle guidance and improved performance on an embedded vehicle detection task (detection of a specific vehicle type). The data provide new light on a “tandem model” of driver behavior that includes both explicit and implicit processes involved in driving performance. The findings also suggest reasons drivers are most likely to crash at locations very near their homes.     

驾驶员选择性注意过程中的规则图式启动效应

本研究将驾驶无意视盲范式与交通违规事件识别任务相结合, 通过两个实验分别探究任务性质(有提示、无提示)和规则图式训练(训练、未训练)对驾驶员识别交通信号和违规事件的影响。结果发现, 交通规则提示能够提高有经验的驾驶员识别交通信号的正确率(实验1); 对于新手驾驶员, 则需要结合规则图式训练才能起到相同效果(实验2)。研究表明驾驶员选择性注意过程中存在规则图式启动效应, 图式训练能够弥补新手驾驶员经验的不足。     

Comparing the glance patterns of older versus younger experienced drivers: Scanning for hazards while approaching and entering the intersection

Older drivers are known to look less often for hazards when turning at T-intersections or at four way intersections. The present study is an extension of Romoser and Fisher (2009) and attempts to further analyze the differences in scanning behavior between older and experienced younger drivers in intersections. We evaluated four hypotheses that attempt to explain the older drivers’ failure to properly scan in intersections: difficulty with head movements, decreases in working memory capacity, increased distractibility, and failure to recall specific scanning patterns. To test these hypotheses, older and younger experienced drivers’ point-of-gaze was monitored while they drove a series of simulated intersections with hidden hazards outside of the turning path. Our results suggest that none of these hypotheses can fully explain our finding that older adults are more likely to remain fixated on their intended path of travel and look less than younger drivers towards other areas where likely hazards might materialize. Instead, the results support a complementary hypothesis that at least some of the difficulties older adults have scanning intersections are due to a specific attentional deficit in the older drivers’ ability to inhibit what has become their prepotent goal of monitoring the vehicle’s intended path of travel, thereby causing older drivers to fail to scan hazardous areas outside this intended path of travel.     

Modeling the development of vehicle lateral control skills in a cognitive architecture

The development of lateral control skills is crucial to driving safety. The current study examined a computational method using a cognitive architecture to model the learning process of vehicle lateral control. In a fixed-base driving simulator, an experiment compared the lateral control performance of non-drivers, novices, and experienced drivers. A cognitive model using Adaptive Control of Thought-Rational (ACT-R) was built to model the learning process of lateral control skills. The modeling results were compared with the human results. The drivers with more experience had better lateral control performance. The model produced similar results as the human results and modeled the progress of learning. The model provided a computational explanation for the mechanisms of lateral control skill learning. Implication and future studies were discussed.     

Difficulties experienced by older drivers during their regular driving and their expectations towards Advanced Driving Aid Systems and vehicle automation

The aim of this study was to analyse the difficulties experienced by older drivers during their regular driving, and to identify their needs and their expectations regarding Advanced Driving Aid Systems (ADAS) and vehicle automation. More than 100 items were investigated by using a Focus Group method based on a Collective Questionnaire (named FoG-CoQS). Thirty elderly drivers, 15 females and 15 males aged from 70 to 81 years (mean age of 73.3; S.D. = 3.18) were recruited among a representative sample of 76 older drivers living in the Rhône area and having previously participated to an on-road experiment, in order to collect from this Focus Group method further information about the driving difficulties they experienced in their everyday life and their expectations towards driving aids. Seven main topics were more particularly investigated, recovering at last all the main dimensions of the driving task (from navigation to speed control, through intersection crossing).Regarding driving difficulties, one of the most interesting result collected is the high contrast between the literature review, identifying Left Turn (LT) manoeuvres at crossroads as a risky driving situation for elderly drivers, and the relatively low values of perceived difficulties (i.e. compared to other driving sub-tasks) collected during this Focus Group among our sample of older drivers. Regarding the driving aid functions investigated, 10 of them obtained high scores of “perceived utility” (i.e. overpassing 60% on scales ranging from 0% [no utility] to 100% [high utility]), and they concerned assistances liable to support all the main components of the driving task investigated in this study.Additional results are related to the differences between the elderly female and male drivers. Several driving situations were assessed as significantly more difficult to perform by the older female than by the older male drivers, like intersection crossing, entering expressways, or implementing a lane change manoeuver. By contrast, this gender effect is more limited regarding driving aids: synthetically, men and women have a positive attitude towards driving aid systems and their expectations for future ADAS are quite similar (for instance, “informative systems” are preferred than driving aids based on “vehicle automation”).Finally, from two transversal items (i.e. “difficulties” to perform a driving sub-task and “perceived utility” of ADAS), it was possible to rank older drivers’ difficulties experienced during their everyday life (from lowest difficulties to “navigate on a familiar itinerary” to highest when “interacting with bicyclists”) and their expectations towards driving aids (from lowest utility score given to “Automatic Lane Change systems” to highest utility value provided to “Speed Informer systems”). At last, older drivers’ acceptance and expectations towards highly automated cars was also investigated: full automation was assessed as an interesting solution to ensure the self-mobility of elderly peoples in their circle, but also for themselves in the future, in case of impairments of their own cognitive or physical capacities.     

中国象棋经验棋手与新手的知觉差异:来自眼动的证据

为探讨中国象棋领域内的专长效应及象棋专长的知觉编码优势,研究采用中国象棋棋局为实验材料,对比了经验棋手和新手在观看象棋棋局时视觉搜索、变化觉察和对棋盘的记忆。实验1呈现真实棋局和随机棋局,要求被试观看5秒后复盘,结果发现经验棋手的复盘正确率高于新手;经验棋手注视棋盘的眼跳幅度和瞳孔直径更大;经验棋手更多注视棋子间而不是棋子本身。实验2采用移动窗口范式控制了观看棋盘时视野大小,结果发现经验棋手在副中央凹呈现时复盘正确率更高,而新手不受视野大小的影响。实验3采用闪烁范式要求棋手觉察变化的棋子,结果发现经验棋手的觉察速度和正确率都优于新手;而且经验棋手在报告变化前就利用中央凹和副中央凹注视到了变化的棋子。结论认为:中国象棋与国际象棋类似,也存在专长的知觉编码优势效应;经验棋手不仅对棋盘记忆更好,而且可以利用存贮的组块和长期练习经验选择性加工棋盘结构信息,利用副中央凹提取信息,具有更大的知觉广度。研究为象棋专家可以利用副中央凹加工棋盘及具有更强的知觉编码能力提供了直接的证据。     

Effect of advanced driver-assistance system trainings on driver workload,knowledge, and trust

Older adults are more likely to get severely injured or die in vehicle crashes. Advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) can reduce their risk of crashes; however, due to the lack of knowledge and training, usage rate of these systems among older drivers is limited. The objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of two ADAS training approaches (i.e., video-based and demonstration-based training) on older drivers’ subjective and objective measures of mental workload, knowledge and trust considering drivers’ demographic information. Twenty older adults, balanced by gender, participated in a driving simulation study. Results indicated that the video-based training might be more effective for females in reducing their mental workload while driving, whereas the demonstration-based training could be more beneficial for males. There was no significant difference between the video-based and demonstration-based trainings in terms of drivers’ trust and knowledge of automation. The findings suggested that ADAS training protocols can potentially be more effective if they are tailored to specific driver demographics.     

A driving simulator study to assess driver performance during a car-following maneuver after switching from automated control to manual control

A review of the literature on autonomous vehicles has shown that they offer several benefits, such as reducing traffic congestion and emissions, and improving transport accessibility. Until the highest level of automation is achieved, humans will remain an important integral of the driving cycle, which necessitates to fully understand their role in automated driving. A difficult research topic involves an understanding of whether a period of automated driving is likely to reduce driver fatigue rather than increase the risk of distraction, particularly when drivers are involved in a secondary task while driving. The main aim of this research comprises assessing the effects of an automation period on drivers, in terms of driving performance and safety implications. A specific focus is set on the car-following maneuver. A driving simulator experiment has been designed for this purpose. In particular, each participant was requested to submit to a virtual scenario twice, with level-three driving automation: one drive consisting of Full Manual Control Mode (FM); the other comprising an Automated Control Mode (AM) activated in the midst of the scenario. During the automation mode, the drivers were asked to watch a movie on a tablet inside the vehicle. When the drivers had to take control of the vehicle, two car-following maneuvers were planned, by simulating a slow-moving vehicle in the right lane in the meanwhile a platoon of vehicles in the overtaking lane discouraged the passing maneuver. Various driving performances (speeds, accelerations, etc.) and surrogate safety measures (PET and TTC) were collected and analysed, focusing on car-following maneuvers. The overall results indicated a more dangerous behavior of drivers who were previously subjected to driving automation; the percentage of drivers who did not apply the brakes and headed into the overtaking lane despite the presence of a platoon of fast-moving vehicles with unsafe gaps between them was higher in AM drive than in FM drive. Conversely, for drivers who preferred to brake, it was noted that those who had already experienced automated driving, adopted a more careful behavior during the braking maneuver to avoid a collision. Finally, with regard to drivers who had decided to overtake the braking vehicle, it should be noted that drivers who had already experienced automated driving did not change their behavior whilst overtaking the stopped lead vehicle.     

Tactical steering behaviour under irrevocable visual occlusion

ObjectiveTo investigate the extent of a driver’s mental model with irrevocable visual occlusion and analysing the distance to crash.BackgroundDrivers have a mental model of the immediate surroundings which allows them to predict their own as well as others’ travel paths. To navigate safely through traffic, this mental model has to be updated frequently to remain valid. In between information sampling events, the mental model will become outdated over time, as the traffic system is dynamic.MethodA simulator study with 22 participants was conducted to investigate the information decay in the mental model. This was implemented by extending visual occlusion until the driver collided with another vehicle or ran off the road, thus providing an estimate of how long it takes until the mental model becomes obsolete.ResultsAn analysis of variance with the factors curve direction, curve radius and traffic showed that curve radius did not influence the distance to crash. Without traffic, drivers veered off the road sooner in right curves. Adding traffic eliminated this difference. Traffic ahead led to a shortened distance to crash. Compared to a tangential travel path from the current lateral position at the time of the occlusion, drivers crashed on average 2.6 times later than they would have, had they not had any mental model of the situation.ConclusionsThe drivers’ mental representation of the future situation seems to include information on how to act, to alleviate deviations in yaw angle, including and considering the presence of other road users.     

Anger-congruent behaviour transfers across driving situations

Anger and aggression on the road may sometimes appear unprovoked and unrelated to current driving circumstances. It is unclear whether such anger and aggression arises because of events prior to those circumstances in which anger is experienced and aggression is exhibited. In this study, time pressure and enforced following of a slowly moving vehicle were used to increase drivers' anger in order to assess whether affect and behaviour during a subsequent, non-provocative, drive would change accordingly. Ninety-six drivers drove twice in a simulated urban environment. During the first drive, oncoming traffic and a slowly moving lead vehicle required that half of the drivers travelled far slower than they would choose. During the second drive, drivers again followed slower vehicles and were required to respond to traffic events not encountered in the manipulation drive. Mood (Profile of Mood States) was assessed before and after each drive, and anger evaluations, arousal (heart rate) and behaviour (speed, lane position and collisions) were measured during drives. Anger increased and both mood and driving behaviour deteriorated in drivers exposed to slower lead vehicles, compared with control group drivers. These behavioural differences of speed and lane positioning carried over into the subsequent drive even to driving situations unlike those where provocation had previously occurred. Drivers who had previously been impeded later approached hazards with less caution, and attempted more dangerous overtaking manoeuvres. It is concluded that sometimes dangerous driving may result from anger provoked by circumstances other than those in which the behaviour is exhibited.     

Anger-congruent behaviour transfers across driving situations

Anger and aggression on the road may sometimes appear unprovoked and unrelated to current driving circumstances. It is unclear whether such anger and aggression arises because of events prior to those circumstances in which anger is experienced and aggression is exhibited. In this study, time pressure and enforced following of a slowly moving vehicle were used to increase drivers’ anger in order to assess whether affect and behaviour during a subsequent, non-provocative, drive would change accordingly. Ninety-six drivers drove twice in a simulated urban environment. During the first drive, oncoming traffic and a slowly moving lead vehicle required that half of the drivers travelled far slower than they would choose. During the second drive, drivers again followed slower vehicles and were required to respond to traffic events not encountered in the manipulation drive. Mood (Profile of Mood States) was assessed before and after each drive, and anger evaluations, arousal (heart rate) and behaviour (speed, lane position and collisions) were measured during drives. Anger increased and both mood and driving behaviour deteriorated in drivers exposed to slower lead vehicles, compared with control group drivers. These behavioural differences of speed and lane positioning carried over into the subsequent drive even to driving situations unlike those where provocation had previously occurred. Drivers who had previously been impeded later approached hazards with less caution, and attempted more dangerous overtaking manoeuvres. It is concluded that sometimes dangerous driving may result from anger provoked by circumstances other than those in which the behaviour is exhibited.     

Exploring the ability to identify visual search differences when observing drivers’ eye movements

How can we improve learner drivers’ visual skills? Much research has demonstrated that learner drivers have an impoverished spread of search during driving and that this is partly due to lack of knowledge of where and when to look, rather than simply an issue of cognitive load. Several training interventions have tried to improve scanning in these drivers with limited success. We propose that exposing drivers to examples of good and bad scanning behaviour may prove to be a useful tool in training visual search. The success of this approach, however, requires drivers to be able to distinguish between examples of good and bad scanning. To this end, two studies were undertaken where video clips of simulated driving with an overlaid eye movement trace were presented to participants who had to judge whether the eye movements were that of a learner driver or a driving instructor. Overall, participants found this discrimination task very difficult. However, the findings suggested that novice and learner drivers were able to correctly classify those eye movement traces of other learner drivers better than chance. It was also demonstrated that the ability to distinguish between the eye movements of learner drivers and driving instructors improved as the number of objective differences between the two groups increased across specific scenarios (as determined by frame-by-frame analysis using a priori categories). The results suggest that, under certain situations, drivers can extract information about the appropriateness of a particular scanning strategy just by watching a video of the eye movement trace. The implications for training interventions are discussed.     

How Experts Adapt Their Gaze Behavior When Modeling a Task to Novices

Domain experts regularly teach novice students how to perform a task. This often requires them to adjust their behavior to the less knowledgeable audience and, hence, to behave in a more didactic manner. Eye movement modeling examples (EMMEs) are a contemporary educational tool for displaying experts’ (natural or didactic) problem-solving behavior as well as their eye movements to learners. While research on expert-novice communication mainly focused on experts’ changes in explicit, verbal communication behavior, it is as yet unclear whether and how exactly experts adjust their nonverbal behavior. This study first investigated whether and how experts change their eye movements and mouse clicks (that are displayed in EMMEs) when they perform a task naturally versus teach a task didactically. Programming experts and novices initially debugged short computer codes in a natural manner. We first characterized experts’ natural problem-solving behavior by contrasting it with that of novices. Then, we explored the changes in experts’ behavior when being subsequently instructed to model their task solution didactically. Experts became more similar to novices on measures associated with experts’ automatized processes (i.e., shorter fixation durations, fewer transitions between code and output per click on the run button when behaving didactically). This adaptation might make it easier for novices to follow or imitate the expert behavior. In contrast, experts became less similar to novices for measures associated with more strategic behavior (i.e., code reading linearity, clicks on run button) when behaving didactically.