Honking Helps Overcome the Driving Too Slowly Problem in Driving Simulators

Abstract

In driving simulators, subjects sometimes drive more slowly than they would on real roads when not attending to driving. To address this problem, in two experiments, groups of 24 subjects drove through 138 intersections with green (53 %), yellow (36 %), or red lights (11 %). The speed limit was 35 mi/hr. In the second experiment, the following vehicle honked as needed.The number of honks per subject varied from 0 to 6 for driving too slowly (less than 25 mi/hr) and 0 to 8 for delayed responses when a traffic light changed from red to green. Older drivers received 2.4 times more honks than younger drivers. Within 5 s after the following vehicle honked between intersections, the mean speed driven increased by 5 mi/hr. Similarly, with honking, the speed 5 s after the light changed increased by 8 mi/hr, both changes that lead to more realistic driving.