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Title:

Driving Performance, Adaptation, and Cognitive Workload Costs of Logo Sign Panel Detection as Mediated by Driver Age

Accession Number:

01626293

Record Type:

Component

Abstract:

Previous crash data analyses have identified young and elderly drivers to be accident-prone. This study investigated the effect of on-road visual sign use on young, middle-aged and elderly driver performance, adaptive vehicle control behavior and mental workload. Participants were uniformly sampled from three age groups (young: ≤ 22 years; middle-aged: 23-64 years; elderly: 65+ years) with balanced genders. A driving simulator was used to present eight simulated highway scenarios (primary task) with an embedded secondary task of business logo sign identification. Driver workload was manipulated by varying logo panel counts on service signs (6-logo vs 9-logo). Results revealed comparable driving performance “costs” among nine logo (high workload) and six-panel (low load) condition when drivers were required to detect familiar targets. However, there were significant cost differences in successful sign detection among age groups. Both elderly and young drivers demonstrated significantly higher cognitive workload (reduced blink duration) in response to a secondary task as compared to middle-aged drivers. In addition, elderly drivers exhibited significantly greater adaptation behaviors (higher speed reduction) and performance degradations (greater lane deviations) during target identification than other age groups drivers. Elderly drivers’ successful target identification rate was significantly lower than other age group (at 54-57%). Positive correlations were found between adaptation behavior and performance degradation and between absolute blink duration ratio and lane deviation. As driver cognitive workload increased, performance degradations also increased. However, no correlation was identified between adaptation behavior and cognitive workload.

Supplemental Notes:

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AND20 Standing Committee on User Information Systems.

Monograph Accession #:

01618707

Report/Paper Numbers:

17-04953

Language:

English

Corporate Authors:

Transportation Research Board

500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001 United States

Authors:

Lau, Mei
Kaber, Dave

Pagination:

17p

Publication Date:

2017

Conference:

Transportation Research Board 96th Annual Meeting

Location: Washington DC, United States
Date: 2017-1-8 to 2017-1-12
Sponsors: Transportation Research Board

Media Type:

Digital/other

Features:

Figures; References (23) ; Tables

Subject Areas:

Highways; Safety and Human Factors

Source Data:

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2017 Paper #17-04953

Files:

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Created Date:

Dec 8 2016 11:54AM