Beyond alerting: Informative tactile, auditory, and multisensory warning signals for safer driving

In 2009, more than 26,000 people were killed or seriously injured in driving accidents in the UK alone. "Driver error/reaction" was cited as the most important contributing factor in the majority of cases. In recent years, there has been a great deal of interest in the development of driver assistance systems, in particular collision warnings which present a signal to the driver when a collision is imminent. These systems hold the potential of presenting a low-cost solution to reducing the substantial loss of life, serious injuries, and financial costs associated with driving accidents in the UK and worldwide. The goal of the proposed research is to develop informative warnings signals delivered through the senses of touch and audition. Informative warning signals have the advantage that they can be used to both shift a driver's attention to the location of the potential collision and provide some useful information about the collision event such as the level of urgency. Furthermore, informative warnings signals can be modified to alert drivers earlier in dangerous road conditions (e.g., snow or ice). In the proposed work, informative tactile and auditory warnings will be created by developing a series of signals for which the physical characteristics of the signal (i.e., its intensity, size, and/or position) will change as a function of the anticipated time to collision, and direction of danger. These signals will be evaluated using a series of basic attention/reaction time experiments and the best signals identified in these early studies followed up by studies conducted in a driving simulator. The final signal designs will be validated using a high-fidelity driving simulator and a diverse population of drivers. It is hoped that this research will help to both improve driving safety and expand our understanding of dynamic information in the senses of touch and audition.

The main beneficiary of the findings of the proposed research is anticipated to be anyone who drives a vehicle. It is expected that if the warning systems developed in this project are made available, drivers using these systems will have a decreased risk of being involved in a vehicle accident. In particular, drivers who are at a high risk of accident (e.g., teenagers and the elderly) would be expected to benefit the most from the technology developed in the work outlined in our proposal. This increase in driving safety is also expected to reduce associated pedestrian and cyclist accidents.

Another potential beneficiary (and necessary part of the process of making the technology available to drivers) will be UK automobile manufacturers who will be able to use the warning systems developed in the proposed research in order to develop safer and more user-friendly vehicles which would be expected to give them an advantage in the highly competitive automobile market. We have already been in contact with one such company: Apex Motors in Oxford.
Government agencies (e.g., the Department of Transport) would be expected to benefit as the proposed will deliver technology and information that can be used to reduce expenditures on hospitalization and other health costs associated with driver accidents and the costs of driving safety programs. The warning signals developed in the proposed research are not restricted to car drivers but could also be used for bus drivers, truck drivers or even in train and aeronautical applications.