Signal evaluation environment: a new method for the design of peripheral in-vehicle warning signals

Driver behavior and performances on in-vehicle display based speed compliance

Traffic safety, and the inherent risks associated with speeding, continue to remain a national priority. Advances in both roadway and vehicle technology have created potential mechanisms to mitigate speeding behaviors. This driving simulator study evaluated the effects of alternative ways to increase driver safety by investigating the characteristics of specific driving cues and drivers' response rates to those cues. The study builds upon existing approaches to symbolically deliver Traffic Control Devices (TCDs), specifically speed alerts, at different locations within the vehicle to reduce cognitive distraction and prevent visual crowding so that drivers can properly select their speed and focus upon the roadway environment. Twenty-three participants received five visual treatments (e.g., combinations of speed alert style, presentation, and location) in a simulated environment. Participants also responded to a set of survey questions following the simulated drive. Participants were evaluated on various response factors to each visual treatment. Results showed that younger participants of the age group 18-23 responded to the visual treatment and stayed within speed limits as compared to other older and more experienced participants. Results also showed that alerts falling in the mid-peripheral visual region and alerts that flashed received an increased response rate for observing speed limits.

Multi-Vehicle Simulation in Urban Automated Driving: Technical Implementation and Added Benefit

This article investigates the simultaneous interaction between an automated vehicle (AV) and its passenger, and between the same AV and a human driver of another vehicle. For this purpose, we have implemented a multi-vehicle simulation consisting of two driving simulators, one for the AV and one for the manual vehicle. The considered scenario is a road bottleneck with a double-parked vehicle either on one side of the road or on both sides of the road where an AV and a simultaneously oncoming human driver negotiate the right of way. The AV communicates to its passenger via the internal automation human–machine interface (HMI) and it concurrently displays the right of way to the human driver via an external HMI. In addition to the regular encounters, this paper analyzes the effect of an automation failure, where the AV first communicates to yield the right of way and then changes its strategy and passes through the bottleneck first despite oncoming traffic. The research questions the study aims to answer are what methods should be used for the implementation of multi-vehicle simulations with one AV, and if there is an added benefit of this multi-vehicle simulation compared to single-driver simulator studies. The results show an acceptable synchronicity for using traffic lights as basic synchronization and a distance control as the detail synchronization method. The participants had similar passing times in the multi-vehicle simulation compared to a previously conducted single-driver simulation. Moreover, there was a lower crash rate in the multi-vehicle simulation during the automation failure. Concluding the results, the proposed method seems to be an appropriate solution to implement multi-vehicle simulation with one AV. Additionally, multi-vehicle simulation offers a benefit if more than one human affects the interaction within a scenario.