Summary:The Road Departure Crash Warning System Field Operational Test (RDCW FOT) was conducted to assess the safety impacts, driver acceptance levels, and the maturity of road departure crash warning systems as installed on a light vehicle platform. This paper presents the experimental design, performance of the road departure system in naturalistic use, and analyses of safety impacts of the technology using surrogate measures. Use of the system led to a 50% reduction in the observed rate of events in which the equipped vehicle came within 0.1 m of a lane edge in steady-state lane-keeping situations. Lane changes performed without the use of a turn signal were reduced by 43% on freeways and ramps and 24% on surface roads. Levels of lateral acceleration in curves was not significantly different, except on ramps, where a significant change in the 90 th percentile values of lateral acceleration were observed for a within-subject comparison. There were no observed effects of risk homeostasis and no evidence of significant negative unintended consequences.

Summary: Lateral Drift Warning (LDW) and Curve Speed Warning (CSW) systems were developed to address two main critical events in run-off-road crashes, which are road edge departure and excessive speed. The LDW system used a two-stage alert system, with the first stage activating when the driver departed a lane with a dashed boundary and the imminent, or second stage, when departing a lane with a solid boundary. The CSW also employed a two-stage alert, with the level based on the degree of over-speed for the upcoming curve. The haptic modality, in the form of seat vibration, was chosen as the first level warning for both systems, and auditory was chosen as the second or most urgent level. The two systems were installed in a fleet of instrumented vehicles and loaned to 78 randomly selected licensed drivers for approximately 4 weeks. Debriefing questions detailing the driver's experience with the system were administered and analyzed in a two by two design of modality by system. After examination of both the statistical results and the open-ended comments, the question of which modality is most appropriate is still uncertain. Each modality had positive aspects. Haptic does not alert the entire car and participants also considered it less distracting. Auditory provided better recognition between warnings and participants were better able to understand the meaning and the required response for each warning.

Summary:Data from 36 drivers involved in a naturalistic driving study was analyzed to determine the frequency and conditions under which drivers engage in secondary behaviors and to explore the relationship these behaviors might have with driving performance. Researchers coded 1,440 five-second video clips of the drivers' faces for the occurrence of specific secondary behaviors and the duration of glances away from the forward scene. Corresponding performance data from the instrumented vehicles were used to calculate variability of steering angle, mean and variability of lane position, mean and variability of throttle position, and variability of speed. All categories of secondary behavior were associated with significantly higher variability in steering angle. The results for other performance measures were mixed. In summary; driving performance measures vary with differing tasks, with no single driving performance indicator that is obviously predictive of drivers' engagement in secondary tasks.

Summary:The road departure crash warning system field operational test (RDCW FOT) was conducted to assess the safety impacts, driver acceptance levels, and the maturity of road departure crash warning systems as installed on a light vehicle platform. This paper presents the results on driver acceptance and perceived utility of a road departure crash warning system.

There has been growing interest in vehicle interior lighting for both functional and aesthetic purposes. Although there is a large body of research on nighttime driver vision and vehicle exterior lighting, there has been little research attention to vehicle interior lighting. This report includes a brief review of some of the research that has been done, and presents the results of a nighttime field study that was performed to contribute to the understanding of how vehicle interior lighting affects some basic aspects of driver vision. Participants in the study were asked to perform two tasks while seated in a stationary experimental car on a closed test road at night: 1) detecting pedestrians on the road ahead, and 2) rating the subjective brightness of a reflected veiling light on the windshield. The veiling light was varied in both luminance and color. The results indicated that pedestrian detection was closely related to photopic photometric measures, suggesting that the pedestrian task was influenced primarily by cone photoreceptors, while the rating of subjective brightness appeared to show an influence of rod photoreceptors. These results have implications for how the photometry of vehicle interior lighting should be performed in order to best correlate with driver visual performance. Future research should further quantify the effects observed here and investigate changes in retinal adaptation associated with automotive interior lighting.