Effect of driving experience on anticipatory look-ahead fixations in real curve driving

Abstract

Anticipatory skills are a potential factor for novice drivers' curve accidents. Behavioural data show that steering and speed regulation are affected by forward planning of the trajectory. When approaching a curve, the relevant visual information for online steering control and for planning is located at different eccentricities, creating a need to disengage the gaze from the guidance of steering to anticipatory look-ahead fixations over curves. With experience, peripheral vision can be increasingly used in the visual guidance of steering. This could leave experienced drivers more gaze time to invest on look-ahead fixations over curves, facilitating the trajectory planning. Eighteen drivers (nine novices, nine experienced) drove an instrumented vehicle on a rural road four times in both directions. Their eye movements were analyzed in six curves. The trajectory of the car was modelled and divided to approach, entry and exit phases. Experienced drivers spent less time on the road-ahead and more time on the look-ahead fixations over the curves. Look-ahead fixations were also more common in the approach than in the entry phase of the curve. The results suggest that with experience drivers allocate greater part of their visual attention to trajectory planning.

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

“…Inexperienced drivers tend to have an elevated mental workload and inefficient visual search, hazard perception and vehicle control abilities (Crundall et al, 1999;Falkmer and Gregersen, 2005). Among inexperienced drivers, accidents on curves are mostly due to loss of control involving excessive speed (Clarke et al, 2006;Laapotti and Keskinen, 1998) and poor trajectory planning skills (Lehtonen et al, 2014).…”

Sensorimotor basis of motor vehicle control

“…They propose that a feed-forward component, namely "trajectory planning", is integrated by experienced drivers to achieve smooth steering. It is now generally accepted that the "two-point" steering strategy is widely used by drivers during daily steering (Robertshaw and Wilkie 2008, Frissen and Mars 2014, Lehtonen, Lappi et al 2014. Despite its popularity, a critical review from Cloete and Wallis (2011) reports that the results from one initial study (Land and Horwood 1995), in which the "two-steering" strategy is built, were heavily affect by the extremely low refresh rate employed, meaning that caution should be employed in interpreting this particular study.…”

“…and "stability control" (Lehtonen, Lappi et al 2014). Lehtonen et al found that experienced drivers have shorter road-ahead (the segment for guidance level) fixation dwell times and longer look-ahead (the segment for trajectory planning) dwell times.…”

“…Lehtonen, Lappi et al (2014) found that experienced drivers invest a considerable amount of mental resources on "trajectory planning" (feed-forward control) during steering. Open-loop "trajectory planning" does not need to be absolutely correct to be effective.…”

“…During such experiments, participants are typically required to move within an artificially generated force field with unfamiliar dynamics, a task they appear able to master even when (Kandil, Rotter et al 2009, Lappi, Lehtonen et al 2013, Lehtonen, Lappi et al 2014, Vansteenkiste, Van Hamme et al 2014, Itkonen, Pekkanen et al 2015. These studies help address issues related to many steering models, as introduced above, but they…”