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Age-Related Driving Performance: Effect of Fog Under Dual-Task Conditions
Get PDFThe present study investigated the driving performance of older and younger drivers using a dual-task paradigm. Drivers were requred to do a car-following task while detecting a signal light change in a light array above the roadway in the driving simulator under different fog conditions. Decreased accuracies and longer response times were recorded for older drivers, compared to younger drivers, expecially under dense fog conditions. In addition, older drivers had decreased car following performance when simultaneously performing the light-detection task. These results suggets that under poor weather conditions (e.g. fog), with reduced visibility, older drivers may have an increased accident risk because of a decreased ability to perform multiple tasks
Auditory In-Vehicle Technologies to Support Older Drivers
Get PDFOBJECTIVES Population aging, in combination with improved health care and more active lifestyles well into advanced age, have resulted in an increased number of older adults driving more miles than ever before. Unfortunately, these older drivers are over-represented in motor vehicle crashes and crash-related fatalities. Rather than the risk-tasking behaviors observed in young drivers, the collisions of older drivers frequently involve perceptual-cognitive errors. Advanced in-vehicle technologies have the potential to function as sensory-cognitive aids and may offset the negative impact of age-related changes in sensory and cognitive abilities. Collision Avoidance Systems (CASs) function as sensory aids to augment hazard detection capabilities, and therefore may be of particular benefit to older drivers. Navigation aids can offset the working memory requirements of wayfinding, and auditory guidance directions may reduce the visual demands of searching for street signs and reading maps. However, these advanced systems also have the potential to increase the information processing demands of the driving task or distract drivers, particularly if they are not designed in accordance with the sensory and perceptual capabilities of older adults. A series of experiments aimed at examining the impact of sensory-cognitive characteristics of auditory navigational aids on driver wayfinding, performance on a visual peripheral detection task, and neurophysiological, behavioral and subjective indices of driver mental workload and performance were conducted. METHODS Results of two investigations will be discussed. The first investigation examined the impact of amplitude level on working memory. Older adults frequently exhibit reduced complex working memory span. However, recent evidence indicates that increasing a sound’s amplitude increases its duration in echoic memory (Baldwin, in press). Based on these findings, we hypothesized that increasing the amplitude of verbal material would improve working memory efficiency. RESULTS In support of this hypothesis, a strong positive correlation between the amplitude level at which the verbal material was presented and complex working memory span as measured by a version of Daneman and Carpenter’s (1980) Listening span task was observed. This positive relationship OBJECTIVES Population aging, in combination with improved health care and more active lifestyles well into advanced age, have resulted in an increased number of older adults driving more miles than ever before. Unfortunately, these older drivers are over-represented in motor vehicle crashes and crash-related fatalities. Rather than the risk-tasking behaviors observed in young drivers, the collisions of older drivers frequently involve perceptual-cognitive errors. Advanced in-vehicle technologies have the potential to function as sensory-cognitive aids and may offset the negative impact of age-related changes in sensory and cognitive abilities. Collision Avoidance Systems (CASs) function as sensory aids to augment hazard detection capabilities, and therefore may be of particular benefit to older drivers. Navigation aids can offset the working memory requirements of wayfinding, and auditory guidance directions may reduce the visual demands of searching for street signs and reading maps. However, these advanced systems also have the potential to increase the information processing demands of the driving task or distract drivers, particularly if they are not designed in accordance with the sensory and perceptual capabilities of older adults. A series of experiments aimed at examining the impact of sensory-cognitive characteristics of auditory navigational aids on driver wayfinding, performance on a visual peripheral detection task, and neurophysiological, behavioral and subjective indices of driver mental workload and performance were conducted. METHODS Results of two investigations will be discussed. The first investigation examined the impact of amplitude level on working memory. Older adults frequently exhibit reduced complex working memory span. However, recent evidence indicates that increasing a sound’s amplitude increases its duration in echoic memory (Baldwin, in press). Based on these findings, we hypothesized that increasing the amplitude of verbal material would improve working memory efficiency. RESULTS In support of this hypothesis, a strong positive correlation between the amplitude level at which the verbal material was presented and complex working memory span as measured by a version of Daneman and Carpenter’s (1980) Listening span task was observed. This positive relationshi
Safety Related Misconceptions and Self-Reported BehavioralAdaptations Associated With Advanced In-Vehicle Systems: Lessons Learned From Early Technology Adopters
Get PDFEarly adopters of advanced in-vehicle technologies (Adaptive Cruise Control, night vision, park aid, and navigation systems) were interviewed in an effort to assess the extent to which drivers come to understand the performance capabilities and limitations of these types of advanced systems, and to understand how systems are influencing driver behavior (modifying behavior in potentially positive or negative ways). Despite access to a wide array of information about their in-vehicle system, responses to knowledge-based questions about the systems themselves suggest that key information was not necessarily acquired nor understood by a large number of drivers. Many drivers held misconceptions about the performance capabilities of their advanced systems, suggesting that drivers’ mental models of how these systems function and perform do not always match reality. For example, 99% of ACC system owners did not know that the system ignores stopped vehicles. Similarly, 41% of park aid system owners did not know that the system warning is tied solely on the distance to objects and does not take into account their closing speed. Self-reported data also provided evidence of behavioral adaptations. Results suggest that additional efforts are needed to increase driver understanding of how these systems operate, particularly for safety-related aspects
Some Negative Effects of Warnings
Get PDFWarnings provide important information about hazards that may be encountered by individuals exposed to them. Some warnings may not be effective because they are not interpreted correctly, require people to perform unrealistic activities, are not recognized, or are ignored because they have lost their attentiongetting capabilities. A common occurrence in the USA, and perhaps other countries as well, is the use of signs to warn of work being performed on the roadway ahead. Often such signs are not removed after the work has been done. Consequently, drivers who have had the experience of seeing the signs with no workers may come to ignore them, and when there is a work crew on the road, some accidents may occur. In the context of modern learning theory, the extinction of cautionary behavior would be expected under such circumstances. The present study surveyed the behaviors of 224 respondents, many of whom indicated they tended to ignore such signs. The present study examined behavior reported to occur under various conditions and found evidence that the greater the frequency of unfulfilled expectations, the greater the reported likelihood of ignoring the warnings
The Effect of Voice Interactions on Drivers’ Guidance of Attention
Get PDFThe objective of the current study was to assess the effect of voice interactions with an in-vehicle system on drivers’ guidance of attention. Our approach was to examine the effect of voice interactions on endogenous control of attention using a modified Posner cue-target paradigm. Consistent with the bottleneck hypothesis, dual-task slowing was observed when drivers responded to an auditory task and to a pedestrian detection task concurrently. This interference contributed to disrupted attention allocation, especially when drivers could not rely on their endogenous control of attention
Driver Performance and Workload Using a Night Vision System
Get PDFNight vision systems (NVS) have the potential to improve the visibility of critical objects at night beyond the levels achievable with low-beam headlamps. This could be especially valuable for older drivers, who have difficulty seeing at night and who are sensitive to glare. However, this benefit may also be accompanied by ancillary costs, such as the additional workload involved with monitoring and interpreting the forward view depicted by the NVS. In this study, we asked young and old subjects to drive at night on a test track while we measured distance and accuracy of target detection, subjective workload, and longitudinal control of the vehicle. In some conditions, direct view of the road was supplemented by a far-infrared NVS with two display configurations: a head-up display mounted above the dashboard, and a head-down display mounted near the vehicle midline. Night vision systems increased target detection distance for both young and old drivers, with noticeably more benefit for younger drivers. Although workload measures did not differ between the unassisted visual detection task and the NVS-assisted tasks, they were greater when driving with a detection task than without
The Impact of an Event-Triggered Video Intervention on Rural Teenage Driving
Get PDFThis study examines the ability of an event-triggered video system to extend parental involvement into the independent driving phase of newly licensed teen drivers. The system provides both immediate feedback and a 20-second video clip, giving the teen driver and their parent the opportunity to review and learn from their mistakes as well as good responses. The event-triggered video system was placed in the vehicles of 25 teen drivers (ages 16-17) for 57 weeks. The first nine weeks established a within-subject baseline; no parental or system feedback was given during this time. During the next 40 weeks, feedback was provided to the teen driver in the form of a blinking LED on the camera and a weekly report card mailed to the parents. The report showed the driver’s weekly and cumulative performance regarding unsafe behaviors and seatbelt use relative to the other participants. The last eight weeks was a second baseline period. Results revealed two distinct groups: one that triggered few events and one that triggered many events. Combining this emerging technology with parental weekly review of safety-relevant incidents resulted in a significant and lasting decrease in events for most of the teens that triggered many events
The Effects of Sleep Deprivation on Simulator Driving as Compared with Other Psychomotor Tests George
Get PDFBroad-Spectrum Clinical Applications of a Low-Fidelity Simulator: Emphasis on Functional Impairment
Get PDFThe recently published 7th edition of the Canadian Medical Association’s guide “Determining Medical Fitness to Operate Motor Vehicles” places an increased emphasis on functional assessment rather than exclusively on a diagnostic categorization in determining license eligibility of Canadian drivers. While there is currently significant interest in research and development of simulation scenarios suitable to screen for specific medical impairments, our research group at University of Toronto has expanded the utility of a single lowcost low-fidelity interactive driving simulation paradigm to screen for functional impairments related to fitness-to-drive in a wide number of clinical conditions. The long-term objective of this project is to be able to use this simulation protocol beyond a research model in fitness-to-drive assessments performed in a routine clinical context
Predicting the Effects of Disability Glare on Driving Performance
Get PDFA driving simulator was used to investigate the effects of simulated glare from the sun on the execution of left-turns at an intersection. The presence of glare resulted in a significant reduction in the safety margin used by drivers (by 0.65 sec on average). The effect of glare was larger for low-contrast than for highcontrast oncoming vehicles. Older drivers (45-60 years) had a significantly greater reduction in safety margin compared to younger drivers (19-29 years), however, there was large inter-driver variability in both age groups. Older drivers adopted a larger safety margin in non-glare conditions with the result that the net effect of glare on driving safety was the same for both age groups. It is proposed that the reduction in retinal image contrast caused by glare caused drivers to overestimate the time to collision with oncoming cars