Influence of arousing attention to a lead vehicle on driver assistance for collision prevention

Abstract

In order to improve road safety, automobile manufacturers have been developing several types of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems(ADAS). It might be possible to arouse attention to enhance situation awareness through road-to-vehicle and inter-vehicle communications, resulting in decreased traffic accidents due to driver inattention. This paper describes effects of arousing attention on driver behaviour by using a high fidelity driving simulators. First it was investigated how car-following behaviour was influenced due to changes in traffic situations, i.e. surrounding vehicles decreased their speed or broke into the next lane. Next it was investigated effect of arousing attention on car-following behaviour and its impact on driving safety compared to situations in which arousing attention was not available. The results showed that there was a possibility that changes in traffic situations affected how to maintain time headway during car-following, resulting in increases in collision risk without arousing attention. Arousing attention had the potential to decrease collision ri sk. However continuous time for arousing attention might be impaired when the time elapsed between the presentation of arousing attention and occurrence of critical situations got longer. Potential applications of these results include important subjects considered when designing driver support systems with arousing attention.