Drivers' information requirements when navigating in an urban environment

Navigating in unfamiliar road environments is a common and demanding cognitive activity. If this cannot be accomplished successfully, there are implications for increased driver workload, delays due to navigation errors, potentially unsafe road behaviour such as late lane changes, and inappropriate traffic management. To enable successful navigation through such environments, it is necessary to understand what the navigation task entails, and what a driver’s corresponding information requirements are. This paper reports the results of a study that sought to identify what information is used by drivers when navigating within a range of urban driving environments, how this information is used, and what the implications are for the design of navigation aids

Incorporating landmarks in driver navigation system design: an overview of results from the REGIONAL project

This paper presents an overview of results from the 2 year REGIONAL project. The aims of REGIONAL were to undertake research to enable landmarks to be an integral feature of future vehicle navigation systems. Results from the project, including 5 empirical road-based trials, are summarised. The main findings were: landmarks were widely used by drivers as key navigation cues; the incorporation of good landmarks within navigation instructions has the potential to considerably enhance vehicle navigation systems; although a wide range of landmarks are potentially useful to a driver, only a limited set, which displayed key characteristics, were consistently effective as navigation cues

TELSCAN code of good practice and handbook of design guidelines for usability of systems by elderly and disabled drivers and travellers

The aim of the TELSCAN Handbook is to raise awareness within the Advanced Transport Telematics (ATT) design industries of the need to include elderly and disabled people in the design and evaluation process. Accessibility to systems for drivers and travellers should be considered early in the design process, just as much as other features such as the need for security, communications capabilities, and low maintenance costs (Nordic Cooperation on Disability, 1998)