The Effects of Vehicle Automation on Driver Engagement: The Case of Adaptive Cruise Control and Mind Wandering.

Objective: This field study examined the effects of adaptive cruise control (ACC) on mind wandering prevalence.

Background: ACC relieves the driver of the need to regulate vehicle speed and following distance, which may result in safety benefits. However, if ACC reduces the amount of attentional resources drivers must devote to driving, then drivers who use ACC may experience increased periods of mind wandering, which could reduce safety.

Pedestrians' estimates of their own visibility: a simple and effective computer-based technique.

Introduction: Research has shown that both pedestrians and drivers drastically overestimate pedestrians' nighttime visibility (NHSTSA, 2008a, 2008b; Owens & Sivak, 1996) and fail to appreciate the safety benefits of proven conspicuity aids. One solution is educational intervention (Tyrrell, Patton, & Brooks, 2004); however, the on-road assessment of its effectiveness is expensive and time consuming.

Method: Experiment One introduces a computer-based alternative to the field-based approach, successfully replicating the previous study's trends among 94 students who either receive or do not receive an educational lecture.

Highlighting human form and motion information enhances the conspicuity of pedestrians at night.

Exploring how biological motion can make pedestrians more conspicuous to drivers at night, one-hundred-and-twenty participants were driven along an open-road route at night and pressed a button whenever they recognized that a pedestrian was present. A test pedestrian wearing black clothing alone or with 302 cm2 of retroreflective markings in one of four configurations either stood still or walked in place on an unilluminated sidewalk. Participants' response distances were maximal for the full biological-motion configuration and remained surprisingly long when convenient subsets of reflective markers were positioned on the pedestrian's ankles and wrists.