The Differences in Hazard Mitigation Responses Implemented by Novice and Experienced Drivers

Steering a car requires visual information from the changing pattern of the road ahead. There are many theories about what features a driver might use, and recent attempts to engineer self-steering vehicles have sharpened interest in the mechanisms involved. However, there is little direct information linking steering performance to the driver's direction of gaze. We have made simultaneous recordings of steering-wheel angle and drivers' gaze direction during a series of drives along a tortuous road. We found that drivers rely particularly on the 'tangent point' on the inside of each curve, seeking this point 1-2 s before each bend and returning to it throughout the bend. The direction of this point relative to the car's heading predicts the curvature of the road ahead, and we examine the way this information is used. Show more

Younger drivers (18-21 years) are over-involved in crashes. Research suggests that one of the reasons for this over-involvement is their failure to scan areas of the roadway for information about potential risks in situations that are hazardous, but not obviously so. The primary objective of the present study is to develop and evaluate a training program that addresses this failure. It was hypothesised that PC-based hazard anticipation training would increase the likelihood that younger drivers would scan for potential hazards on the open road. In order to test this hypothesis, 12 trained and 12 untrained drivers' eye movements were measured as they drove a vehicle on local residential, feeder and arterial roads. Overall, the trained drivers were significantly more likely to gaze at areas of the roadway that contained information relevant to the reduction of risks (64.4%) than were the untrained drivers (37.4%). Significant training effects were observed even in situations on the road that were quite different from those shown in training. These findings have clear implications for the type of training of teen drivers that is necessary in order to increase their anticipation of hazards. Show more