Maintaining Lane Position with Peripheral Vision during In-Vehicle Tasks

Abstract

Much research on driver attention, including evaluations of in-car equipment, at least implicitly assumes that attention is where the gaze is. Research on the dynamics of visual attention, however, suggests that drivers may use peripheral vision and that they learn its use over time, depending on the task demands and eccentricity. To investigate effects of task load and position on lane keeping, 11 novices and 16 experienced drivers were asked to drive along a straight road using only peripheral vision for lane keeping while doing another task foveally. The task varied in position and in mental load, with two difficulty levels in each of two different tasks. In the visual attention tasks, position had a clearly different effect on lane-keeping performance among novices and the experienced, as measured by the distance covered before crossing a lane boundary. Novices' performance deteriorated with the foveal task at near periphery at the speedometer level, whereas the performance of experienced drivers dropped only when the foveal task was down in the middle console. The result supports the hypothesis that novices need foveal vision at first for lane keeping but, with increasing practice, learn to manage with more peripheral vision. In the arithmetic tasks, however, no consistent experience-dependent task position effects occurred. Different results obtained for different tasks imply that when evaluating in-car facilities, the task characteristics and the respective resource allocation needed should be taken into account.

What do cyclists need to see to avoid single-bicycle crashes?

“…Higgins et al 1998, Owens and Tyrrell 1999, Brooks et al 2005. Leibowitz and Post (1982) (Summala et al 1996), while they do not perform well in detecting a closing headway or looming vehicle in peripheral vision (Summala et al 1998, Terry et al 2008. Drivers of all ages experience serious visual impairment in low illumination conditions, particularly a degradation of visual recognition abilities, i.e.…”

Driver performance in the moments surrounding a microsleep

“…Lane keeping behavior was assessed by the standard deviation in lane position (SDLP) and was calculated as the distance between the vehicle midline and lane centerline. SDLP is a frequently used metric (George, 2004;Risser et al, 2000;Summala et al, 1996) that indexes road tracking error or "weaving". This increases as a driver loses control over the vehicle's lateral position (de Waard & Brookhuis, 1991;Lenne et al, 1998;Ramaekers, 2003).…”

How much visual road information is needed to drive safely and comfortably?

“…Overload can result from the use of additional devices such as mobile phones (e.g., Brookhuis, de Vries & De Waard, 1991, Goodman, Tijerina, Bents & Wierwille, 1999, or other distracting new in-car telematics (Fairclough, Ashby & Parkes, 1993, Summala, Nieminen & Punto, 1996, Lamble, Kauranen, Laakso & Summala, 1999. Increased road complexity is also a factor that has been studied (De Waard, 1991, Richter, Wagner, Heger & Weise, 1998, Verwey, 2000, Kantowitz & Simsek, 2001), but less is known about the minimal visual properties a road has to have to give enough guidance to drive safely.…”