Integrating Intelligent Driver Warning Systems: Effects of Multiple Alarms and Distraction on Driver Performance

Abstract

Driver warning systems are under development to improve safety in driving; yet the integration of these systems in cars may increase the complexity of driving, especially in high workload situations. Critical human factors issues arise, such as how the interaction between alerting schemes, system reliabilities, and distractions combine to affect human performance and situation awareness. An experiment was conducted to study how a single master alert versus multiple individual alerts of different reliabilities affect drivers’ responses to different imminent collision situations while distracted. The driver warning systems included auditory alerts for an imminent frontal or rear collisions, or for unintentional left and right lane departures. The different warning systems and reliability factors produced significantly different reaction times and response accuracies. The low reliability system caused accuracy rates to fall more than 40% across the four warning systems. For the master versus individual alarms factor, drivers responded statistically the same to the different collision warnings for both reaction times and accuracy of responses. In a subjective post-experiment assessment, subjects preferred distinct alarms for different driver warning systems, even though their objective performance showed no difference to the different alerting schemes.