Pursuit Eye-Movements in Curve Driving Differentiate between Future Path and Tangent Point Models

Abstract

For nearly 20 years, looking at the tangent point on the road edge has been prominent in models of visual orientation in curve driving. It is the most common interpretation of the commonly observed pattern of car drivers looking through a bend, or at the apex of the curve. Indeed, in the visual science literature, visual orientation towards the inside of a bend has become known as “tangent point orientation”. Yet, it remains to be empirically established whether it is the tangent point the drivers are looking at, or whether some other reference point on the road surface, or several reference points, are being targeted in addition to, or instead of, the tangent point. Recently discovered optokinetic pursuit eye-movements during curve driving can provide complementary evidence over and above traditional gaze-position measures. This paper presents the first detailed quantitative analysis of pursuit eye movements elicited by curvilinear optic flow in real driving. The data implicates the far zone beyond the tangent point as an important gaze target area during steady-state cornering. This is in line with the future path steering models, but difficult to reconcile with any pure tangent point steering model. We conclude that the tangent point steering models do not provide a general explanation of eye movement and steering during a curve driving sequence and cannot be considered uncritically as the default interpretation when the gaze position distribution is observed to be situated in the region of the curve apex.

Humans use Optokinetic Eye Movements to Track Waypoints for Steering

“…In the study of spontaneous gaze strategies (in tasks such as driving), the empirical situation on the presence and characteristics of CEM has in fact been much more muddy than one might expect. What is more, field and laboratory results seem to be diverging rather than converging, Field studies of walking [19][20][21]30,31 bicycling 22 and driving 23,24,32 tending to report CEM (thus qualitatively our result of robust OKN in the test track experiment complements these existing observations -though for a diverging view see 26,33 ). But laboratory studies -where one would expect the most accurate and reliable behavioural and psychophysiological measurements to come from -tend to report either no OKN 25 or OKN poorly matching visual flow in simulated locomotion 27 .…”

Eye movements in the wild: Oculomotor control, gaze behavior & frames of reference

“…Which objects or locations are fixated (to glean high resolution foveal information and/or stabilize gaze), and in what order (how the "scanpath" relates to global scene structure and task organization) have been explored in a variety of natural tasks. These include making tea (Land, Mennie, & Rusted, 1999), making a sandwich (Hayhoe, Shrivastava, Mruczek & Pelz, 2003), steering a car (Land, 1992;Land & Lee, 1994;Lappi, Pekkanen & Itkonen, 2013) and sports such as cricket (Land & McLeod, 2000;Mann, Spratford & Abernethy, 2013) and squash (Hayhoe et al, 2012). This research has begun to reveal recurring patterns of gaze behavior that are surprisingly regular and repeatable (reviewed in Hayhoe and Ballard (2005), Kowler, (2011), Land (2006), Regan and Gray (1999), and ).…”

Beyond the tangent point: Gaze targets in naturalistic driving

“…To our knowledge, only two previous studies have explicitly addressed the FP versus TP debate with real on-road data: 7 Kandil et al (2009) and Lappi, Pekkanen, and Itkonen (2013). Kandil et al (2009) involved an experimental setting that compared six experienced drivers' visual behavior and steering while driving on on-ramps and off-ramps in a cloverleaf motorway junction with different gaze instructions.…”