Operational Hazard Anticipation: Examination of Overt Anticipatory Behaviors in Latent Hazard Scenarios Using a High-Fidelity Driving Simulator

Young drivers are more likely to be involved in fatal crashes compared to more experienced drivers. Perceptual-cognitive skills such as anticipating and mitigating hazards may contribute to this risk. However, the connection between anticipating a hazard and successfully mitigating said hazard is not clear. One novel concept that may bridge hazard anticipation and mitigation is operational hazard anticipation. Operational hazard anticipation is the act of engaging in anticipatory actions in preparation for the possibility of eventual hazard mitigation. This study examined a possible measure of operational hazard anticipation, hovering one’s foot over the brake and accelerator, and the relationship between latent tactical hazard anticipation and operational hazard anticipation. Exploratory analyses were conducted to examine the possible relationship between operational hazard anticipation and collision avoidance performance. Inexperienced and experienced drivers drove through eight simulator scenarios, each with either a behavioral hazard (the hazard and precursor are the same) or an environmental hazard (the hazard and precursor are different objects). Experienced drivers engaged in operational hazard anticipation behaviors more frequently than inexperienced drivers and these behaviors were seen more frequently in behavioral scenarios compared to environmental scenarios. In addition, participants’ average operational hazard anticipation score was positively related to successfully avoiding a collision when the hazard was environmental. These findings support operational hazard anticipation as a skill set distinct from tactical hazard anticipation and can offer insights into how to train young inexperienced drivers to successfully avoid hazards on the road

Attentional Control in Young Drivers: Does Training Help or Hinder Bottom-Up Processing in a Dynamic Driving Environment?

Anticipating hidden hazards on the road is a critical skill for safe driving, one that many young and novice drivers lack. Training programs are shown to improve hazard anticipation performance in young drivers, but whether these training effects persist in the presence of salient and potentially distracting stimuli remains relatively less explored. In this study, we examined whether the effectiveness of an existing driving training program, Risk Awareness Perception Training (RAPT), on increasing latent hazard anticipation on the road persisted with extraneous bottom-up stimuli in the road environment. Forty-one young drivers, aged 18-21, completed a series of driving scenarios with latent hazards, after completing RAPT or a placebo training, in a medium-fidelity driving simulator with their eyes tracked. The eye movement data showed that RAPT-trained drivers anticipated hazards correctly in more scenarios than Placebo-trained drivers, replicating previous works. Additionally, the results suggest that the effectiveness of RAPT persisted even in scenarios that involve dynamic onset of pedestrians presented simultaneously with the latent hazards. The results imply that RAPT can improve drivers’ latent hazard anticipation performance, protecting them from the adverse effect of attentional capture by stimulus movements that coexist with latent road hazards

Ethical Decision Making Behind the Wheel – A Driving Simulator Study

Over the past several years, there has been considerable debate surrounding ethical decision making in situations resulting in inevitable casualties. Given enough time and all other things being equal, studies show that drivers will typically decide to strike the fewest number of pedestrians in scenarios where there is a choice between striking several versus one or no pedestrians. However, it is unclear whether drivers behave similarly under situations of time pressure. In our experiment in a driving simulator, 32 drivers were given up to 2 s to decide which group of pedestrians to avoid among groups of larger (5) or smaller (≤1) number of pedestrians. Our findings suggest that while people frequently choose utilitarian decisions in the typical, abstract manifestations of the Trolley Problems, drivers can fail to make utilitarian decisions in simulated driving environments under a restricted period of time representative of the time they would have to make the same decision in the real world (2 s). Analysis of eye movement data shows that drivers are less likely to glance at left and right sides of crosswalks under situations of time duress. Our results raise critical engineering and ethical questions. From a cognitive engineering standpoint, we need to know how long at minimum a driver needs to make simple, moral decisions in different scenarios. From an ethical standpoint, we may need to evaluate whether automated vehicle algorithms can aid decision making on our behalf when there is not enough time for a driver to make a moral decision

Effects of Inaccurate Gaze Behavior on Young Drivers’ Hazard Anticipation

A previous study (Yamani et al., 2018) demonstrated that the administration of expert eye movement videos following hazard anticipation training can improve the proportion of latent hazards anticipated by young drivers compared to control conditions. The current driving simulator study sought to examine whether the improvements observed in the previous study were merely due to drivers’ exposure to videos of the simulated driving scenarios with expert eye movement overlays immediately prior to evaluation, or whether modeling the accuracy of eye movement behavior can lead participants to internalize hazard anticipation skills more effectively. In a between-subject design, 36 drivers (18-21 years) were assigned to one of three experimental conditions – training only, training plus expert eye movements or training plus novice eye movements. All participants navigated four unique driving scenarios, each with their eye movements tracked and recorded. Analyses of the eye movement data showed that young drivers who saw the expert eye movement (accurate) videos immediately following training anticipated a substantially greater proportion of latent hazards compared to the young drivers that saw novice eye movement (inaccurate) videos following training. The data provide some evidence that drivers were able to successfully map and incorporate correct hazard anticipation glance behavior into their mental models. The findings present some implications for the design and evaluation of eye movement-based training interventions