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These findings should facilitate developing a multimodality integrated crash alert approach for vehicles equipped with multiple crash avoidance systems.

This in-traffic, field study examined the merit of using a car seat instrumented with tactile stimulation elements (tactors) to communicate directional information to a driver. A car seat fitted with an 8 times 8 matrix of tactors embedded in the seat pan was used to code eight different directions (the four cardinal and four oblique directions). With this seat mounted in a car, a field study was conducted under both smooth road and brick road vibratory conditions. The primary performance measures were directional accuracy and reaction time, measured under both alerted and simulated surprise conditions. Overall, the results show that the tactile chair seat provides a promising and robust method of providing directional information. The percentage of correct directional responses was very high (92 percent of all trials), and incorrect responses were typically just one location segment (45 degrees) off.

These results are being used to develop an alert timing approach for a forward collision warning system intended to assist drivers in avoiding rear-end crashes with the vehicle ahead.

No abstract