The Effects of Continuous Driving-Related Feedback on Drivers’ Response to Automation Failures

Abstract

During prolonged periods of autonomous driving, drivers tend to shift their attention away from the driving task. As a result, they require more time to regain awareness of the driving situation and to react to it. This study examined the use of informative automation that during Level-3 autonomous driving provided drivers with continuous feedback regarding the vehicle’s actions and surroundings. It was hypothesized that the operation of informative automation will trigger drivers to allocate more attention to the driving task and will improve their reaction times when resuming control of the vehicle. Sixteen participants drove manual and autonomous driving segments in a driving simulator equipped with Level-3 automation. For half of the participants, the informative automation issued alerts and messages while for the other half no messages were issued (control). The number of on-road glances served as a proxy for drivers’ attention. Drivers’ performance on handling an unexpected automation failure event was measured using their time-to-brake and time-to-steer. Results showed that drivers using the informative automation made more frequent on-road glances than drivers in the control group. Yet, there were no significant differences in reaction times to the automation failure event between the groups. Explanations and implications of these results are discussed.

Beyond mere take-over requests: The effects of monitoring requests on driver attention, take-over performance, and acceptance

“…Put differently, the MRs effectively exploit the idea that automated driving can independently involve driver monitoring transitions and control transitions (Lu et al, 2016). Our results align with previous studies Cohen-Lazry et al, 2017;Dziennus et al, 2016;Yang et al, 2017;Helldin et al, 2013), which have shown that MRs and other types of uncertainty indicators stimulate driver to allocate attention to the road when encountering an unpredictable driving environment, in turn yielding improved responses in critical situations.…”

“…Compared to without such an uncertainty symbol, the participants intervened with a longer time to collision (TTC) in case of automation failure. Other examples are a LED bar on the instrument cluster indicating the momentary abilities of the automation (Helldin, Falkman, Riveiro, & Davidsson, 2013;Large et al, 2017), an ambient LED strip changing its colour or blinking patterns based on hazard uncertainty information Yang et al, 2017), a continuous verbal notification informing the driver about the state of the ego car and the behaviour of other road users (Cohen-Lazry, Borowsky, & Oron-Gilad, 2017), and a lane-line tracking confidence notification (Tijerina et al, 2017). The results of these studies showed that participants who were provided with the uncertainty indication were better prepared in critical situations (Dziennus et al, 2016;Helldin et al, 2013;Yang et al, 2017).…”

“…In particular, continuous displays require driver attention and may hinder engagement in non-driving tasks. Conversely, drivers may neglect such displays when they wish to perform a non-driving task (Cohen-Lazry et al, 2017;Yang et al, 2017).…”

Reducing driver distraction by improving secondary task performance through multimodal touchscreen interaction

“…Driver distraction is a widespread, yet complex issue [2,29,30]. The diverting of attention from activities critical for safe driving has been proven to cause accidents and loss of life.…”

Unimodal and Multimodal Signals to Support Control Transitions in Semiautonomous Vehicles

“…Some earlier work has aimed to solve the problem by providing continuous information to the driver during automated driving [2,5,46]. However, continuous information mediation about, for example, ongoing traffic or the functionality of the automated driving system can be distracting or neglected.…”