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Distractive or Supportive - How Warnings in The Head-Up Display Affect Drivers' Gaze and Driving Behavior
Distractive or Supportive - How Warnings in The Head-Up Display Affect Drivers' Gaze and Driving Behavior
Distractive or Supportive - How Warnings in The Head-Up Display Affect Drivers' Gaze and Driving Behavior
Distractive or supportive how warnings in the headup display affect drivers gaze and driving behavior
Susann Winkler, Juela Kazazi & Mark Vollrath
Department of Traffic and Engineering Psychology
Technische Universitt Braunschweig
Braunschweig, Germany
I. INTRODUCTION
Urban areas and their complex driving situations are a big
challenge to drivers. They are confronted with numerous
distracting stimuli and high information density, combined
with short decision times. Additionally, the interaction between
various road users (vehicles, pedestrians, bicyclists) is at its
maximum here. Thus, many critical situations arise in urban
areas, combined with driver errors this result in a large number
of accidents. Assisting drivers here is of great importance and
978-1-4673-6596-3/15 $31.00 2015 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/ITSC.2015.172
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windshield overlapping with the scenery. Presented drivercentered, right above the engine hood, measuring maximum
21x21 cm (6 visual angle), they were triggered as the safetycritical object started moving (around 1.66 s before its crossing
point with the ego vehicle). Moreover, the driver warnings
varied in their strategy (reaction vs. attention oriented) and
specificity (generic vs. specific). In sum, four different warning
types were generated (see Table I). As reaction oriented
generic (RG) warning, a stop sign was to elicit an immediate
brake reaction by the drivers, while the reaction oriented
specific (RS) warning displayed a stop sign for brake reactions
or a swerving sign when steering reactions were more
beneficial like in the analyzed scenario. In the attention
oriented generic (AG) warning the drivers general attention
was to be raised by a caution sign, whereas in the attention
specific (AS) warning the triangle included the current safetycritical object (a pedestrian in the analyzed scenario) in order to
guide the drivers attention directly towards it. Table I shows
all implemented warning types as well as the control group (C),
receiving no warning at all.
TABLE I.
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C. Participants
In total, sixty drivers (27 female, 33 male) participated in
the experiment (Mean (M) = 23.7 years, Standard Deviation
(SD) = 3.7 years). They were recruited through flyers, mailing
lists and an existing pool of trained simulator drivers. The
average driving experience was 5.7 years (SD = 3.6 years) and
the annual mileage was mainly less than 3000 km. All
participants had normal or corrected-to-normal visual acuity.
Simulator training was required for participation in order to
avoid simulation sickness. Drivers were compensated with 12
for a successful participation or received course credits (if
students at the Technische Universitt Braunschweig).
Gaze behavior
The analysis of the gaze behavior showed that all drivers
sooner or later gazed at the safety-critical object (CO). The
HUD however, was gazed at before brake initiation by only
45.8% of all drivers who received a warning (N = 22). The
HUD glance distribution over the warning groups was quite
equal, with about half of the drivers within each warning group
gazing at the HUD (HUD glance before brake initiation for
RG: N = 6, RS: N = 5, AG: N = 5, AS: N = 6). Some more
HUD glances occurred after drivers began to brake, especially
in the RG warning (HUD glance after brake initiation for RG:
N = 5, RS: N = 1, AG: N = 1, AS: N = 1). However, in this
paper the HUD glances before brake initiation are focused as
this is the critical phase with the most distraction potential of
the driver warnings.
D. Procedure
After a welcome, participants were instructed in written
form about the experiments objectives. They signed a consent
form and filled in a demographic questionnaire. To familiarize
the drivers with the simulator, they absolved an about 15 min
training drive in the simulator. Subsequently equipped with the
Dikablis glance tracking glasses, they started the actual test
drive with in sum eight different critical situations. After the
first test drive, a small break was offered, before the second
test drive started. Both test drives included the same scenarios,
however in randomized orders. In the end, the participants
were interviewed about the driver warnings and their usability
and thanked for their participation as well as compensated. The
entire experiment took approximately one and a half hour.
Unit
s
s
s
%
ANALYZED VARIABLES
Description of variable
Number of drivers who gazed at an area of
interest (AOI: safety-critical object or HUD)
for at least 0.1 s
Time period in which an AOI (safety-critical
object or HUD) is fixated
Time from warning onset until AOI (safetycritical object or HUD) fixation
Number of incidents, when the ego vehicle
collided with the crossing pedestrian
Time from warning onset until pressing of
the brake pedal
Maximum pressing of the brake pedal after
warning onset in percent of the sample
maximum before pedestrian crossing point
B. Number of collisions
To analyze the effect of the warning type on the number of
collisions, a chi-squared (X) test was conducted. As can be
seen in Fig. 1, there were no overall significant differences in
the number of collisions due to the warning type (X = 1.60,
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Fig. 2. Mean brake reaction time for the control and all four warning groups
with and without head-up display (HUD) glance, displaying the number
of participants (N) included in the bottom of the bars.
Fig. 1. Number of collisions for the control and all four warning groups with
and without head-up display (HUD) glance, displaying the number of
participants (N) included in the bottom of the bars.
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IV. DISCUSSION
This paper presents an explorative analysis on how
different types of driver warnings in the HUD affect drivers
performance (driving and gaze behavior) in a very critical
pedestrian crossing scenario. The aim is to create driver
warnings which most drivers recognize, understand easily and
process rapidly in order to reduce the accident rate and severity
in urban areas. An immediate emergency brake or swerving
onto the green area would have been ideal as a driver response
in the examined scenario. However, all but one driver (not
even receiving the RS warning) reacted by braking, since the
swerving sign might have not been familiar to the drivers.
Before discussing the results, some limitations have to be
mentioned. First of all, the drivers knew that critical situations
might occur through instructions and after encountering the
first scenario themselves. Thereby drivers were more alert than
perhaps in everyday traffic, to which the laboratory
environment additionally contributed [15]. This reduced the
effect of surprise, which drivers would experience in the field.
However, the diversity of the altogether eight critical scenarios
included in this study (different safety-critical objects and
locations) made it hard to guess what might happen next. Still
drivers knew they were being supported by a driver warning
system and that the study aimed at evaluating it, so they might
have been also more alert for warnings in general. This might
have influenced the gaze behavior. For example, drivers
glances might have frequented the HUD more often than they
normally would and thus already lasting there when the
warning was triggered in the first place. In addition, the driver
warnings occurred rather frequently, far more than in real
traffic. However, all these circumstances were practical
experimental necessities. Furthermore, when interpreting the
results, it has to be taken into account that the number of
analyzed participants (each of the five groups: N = 12) was
limited in this study due to (many potential participants being
excluded from the experiment as a result of) simulation
sickness and experiencing many critical scenarios
consecutively being quite stressful for participants.
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