Effects of forward collision warning and repeated event exposure on emergency braking

Many experimental studies use repeated lead vehicle braking events to study the effects of forward collision warning (FCW) systems. It can, however, be argued that the use of repeated events induce expectancies and anticipatory behaviour that may undermine validity in terms of generalisability to real-world, naturalistic, emergency braking events. The main objective of the present study was to examine to what extent the effect of FCW on response performance is moderated by repeated exposure to a critical lead vehicle braking event. A further objective was to examine if these effects depended on event criticality, here defined as the available time headway when the lead vehicle starts to brake. A critical lead vehicle braking event was implemented in a moving-base simulator. The effects of FCW, repeated event exposure and initial time headway on driver response times and safety margins were examined. The results showed that the effect of FCW depended strongly on both repeated exposure and initial time headway. In particular, no effects of FCW were found for the first exposure, while strong effects occurred when the scenario was repeated. This was interpreted in terms of a switch from closed-loop responses triggered reactively by the situation, towards an open-loop strategy where subjects with FCW responded proactively directly to the warning. It was also found that initial time headway strongly determined response times in closed-loop conditions but not in open-loop conditions. These results raise a number of methodological issues pertaining to the design of experimental studies with the aim of evaluating the effects of active safety systems. In particular, the implementation of scenario exposure and criticality must be carefully considered.