Aging and the detection of imminent collisions under simulated fog conditions

Abstract

The present study examined age-related differences in collision detection performance when contrast of the driving scene was reduced by simulated fog. Older and younger drivers were presented with a collision detection scenario in a simulator in which an object moved at a constant speed on a linear trajectory towards the driver. Drivers were shown part of the motion path of an approaching object that would eventually either collide with or pass by the driver and were required to determine whether or not the object would collide with the driver. Driver motion was either stationary or moving along a linear path down the roadway. A no fog condition and three different levels of fog were examined. Detection performance decreased when dense fog was simulated for older but not for younger observers. An age-related decrement was also found with shorter display durations (longer time to contact). When the vehicle was moving decrements in performance were observed for both younger and older drivers. These results suggest that under inclement weather conditions with reduced visibility, such as fog, older drivers may have an increased crash risk due to a decreased ability to detect impending collision events.

Effects of fog, driver experience and gender on driving behavior on S-curved road segments

“…Fog as a type of inclement weather, has an enormous negative influence on drivers' visibility, which causes quite a change in driving behavior. Previous studies of driving behavior in fog have focused on drivers' car following performance (Broughton et al, 2007;Kang et al, 2008;Ni et al, 2010), collision avoidance performance (Ni et al, 2012;Mueller and Trick, 2012) and behavior/responses to road sign instructions (Hassan and Abdel-Aty, 2011;Trick et al, 2010). However, little research has investigated how drivers perform on roads with complex alignments such as S-curves when driving in fog.…”

Estimating time-to-contact when vision is impaired

“…However, it also suggests that contrast reduction does not necessarily affect TTC estimation, as an indicator of estimated stopping distance, even if it affected speed control behavior. On the other hand, there is evidence for a direct effect of reduced contrast on collision detection sensitivity in older drivers 33 , which presumably relies on similar mechanisms as TTC estimation.…”

Behavioral training to improve collision detection

“…In each trial, the participant translated toward a white sphere (2.4 m diameter). The object motion trajectories were generated using the same method employed in a number of previous studies (Andersen & Enriquez, 2006;Ni, Bian, Guindon, & Andersen, 2012). In each trial, the sphere was placed 300 m away from the observer at a point randomly chosen along an arc (6208 from the center of the display).…”