Effect of directional speech warnings on road hazard detection

Serrano, Jesús; Stasi, Leandro L. Di; MegíAs, Alberto; Catena, Andrés

Affiliations

¹Learning, Emotion, and Decision Group, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Granada, Campus de Cartuja, Granada, Spain

²Cognitive Ergonomics Group, Department of Experimental Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, University of Granada, Campus de Cartuja, Granada, Spain

Abstract and keywords

Background: In the last 2 decades, cognitive science and the transportation psychology field have dedicated a lot of effort to designing advanced driver support systems. Verbal warning systems are increasingly being implemented in modern automobiles in an effort to increase road safety.

Objective: The study presented here investigated the impact of directional speech alert messages on the participants’ speed to judge whether or not naturalistic road scenes depicted a situation of impending danger.

Method: Thirty-eight volunteers performed a computer-based key-press reaction time task.

Results: Findings indicated that semantic content of verbal warning signals can be used for increasing driving safety and improving hazard detection. Furthermore, the classical result regarding signal accuracy is confirmed: directional informative speech messages lead to faster hazard detection compared to drivers who received a high rate of false alarms.

Conclusion: Notwithstanding some study limitations (lack of driver experience and low ecological validity), this evidence could provide important information for the specification of future Human-Machine-interaction (HMI) design guidelines.

Keywords: Risk taking; Safety; ADAS; Prevention; Traffic

Links

DOI: 10.1080/15389588.2011.620661

PubMed: 22133340

History

Received: 2011-06-08

Accepted: 2011-09-01

Online: 2011-12-1

Cited Works (1)

Year	Entry
2005	Neale VL, Dingus TA, Klauer SG, Sudweeks J, Goodman M. An overview of the 100-car naturalistic study and findings. In: Proceedings of the 19th International Technical Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles (ESV). June 6-9, 2005; Washington, DC.