Older adult drivers typically experience age-related declines in sensory, cognitive, and psychomotor abilities that might affect their ability to drive safely. Automation is envisioned as a potential remedy to help these individuals continue to maintain their driving safety and mobility. However, the benefits of automated features or advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) depend on a variety of factors including trust, acceptance, adoption, understanding, as well as usage patterns and the ability to realize the full benefits of such systems. The objective of this study was to investigate whether ADAS can benefit mobility and driving performance of older adult drivers.
We conducted a naturalistic driving study, recruiting 18 male and female drivers aged 70-79 to drive ADAS-equipped vehicles for six weeks each. The ADAS features each vehicle had in common were blind spot alert (BSA), lane departure alert (LDA), lane keep assist (LKA), and adaptive cruise control (ACC). Each participant was given a study vehicle for six weeks. Each vehicle was instrumented with a custom data acquisition system (DAS) incorporating several camera views and other sensors (e.g., GPS and a variety of vehicle kinematics) to collect time-series data on driving behaviors. We also collected data on attitudes towards the in-vehicle technologies at several key touchpoints during their participation.
Negative initial attitudes towards the advanced features; positive post-exposure attitudes towards the advanced features
Most agreed that the features improve safety
Driving Performance: SHRP2_PENN vs. SMX
Measure | Test Statistics | Degrees of Freedom | P-Value |
---|---|---|---|
Number of lateral events/km | T = −1.74 | 28.88 | 0.09 |
Variance in acceleration magnitudes across lateral events | T = 24.49 | 32.15 | <.001 |
Number of longitudinal acceleration events/km | U = 106 | – | <.001 |
Number of longitudinal deceleration events/km | U = 412 | – | 0.002 |
Variance in acceleration/deceleration magnitudes across longitudinal events | T = 4.19 | 29.80 | <.001 |
Note: T = Welch’s t-test; U = Mann-Whitney-Wilcoxon test
Comparison of Trips Between ACC Disengaged and Engaged in SMX (Sample Size: 494 for ACC Disengaged and 34 for Engaged)
Measure | Test Statistics | df | P-Value |
---|---|---|---|
Number of lateral events/km | U = 9,724 | – | 0.12 |
Max lateral acceleration | T = 0.08 | 38.52 | 0.93 |
Number of longitudinal acceleration events/km | U = 11,488 | – | <0.001 |
Number of longitudinal deceleration events/km | U = 8,013 | – | 0.56 |
Max longitudinal acceleration | T = 2.37 | 37.99 | 0.02 |
Max longitudinal deceleration | T = 1.33 | 38.41 | 0.19 |
Note: T = Welch’s t-test; U = Mann-Whitney-Wilcoxon test
Potential reasons for the inconsistent results on lateral control performance: 1. confounding factors, such as traffic environment and car models; 2. the influence of other ADAS, particularly LKA and LDW, have been demonstrated to affect lateral vehicle control; 3. negative behavioral adaptation that occurs after introducing ACC.