Evaluations of Different Human Machine Interfaces for Presenting Right-Turn Timing at Intersections

TLDR: It was observed that the driver’s reaction time could be significantly reduced when the right-turn timing assistance was provided with haptic and auditory interfaces alone or the combinations of haptic, auditory and visual interfaces, compared to the condition without assistance.

Abstract: Several driver assistance systems have been proposed to assist drivers to avoid collisions at intersections, by informing drivers about the existence of oncoming vehicles. However, drivers still need to judge the right-turn timing by themselves. This study proposed a right-turn timing assistance system. Different human machine interfaces of the system, including haptic, visual and auditory methods, were evaluated by analyzing the influences on driver behaviors in actual vehicle experiments. It was observed that the driver’s reaction time could be significantly reduced when the right-turn timing assistance was provided with haptic and auditory interfaces alone or the combinations of haptic, auditory and visual interfaces, compared to the condition without assistance. The meaning of right-turn timing assistance was significant easier for drivers to understand when it was presented with visual interface than auditory interface. Meanwhile, the post-encroachment time value was not smaller than 5 s when the assistance was presented with the haptic, visual and auditory interfaces together, which indicated a small risk of collision with the oncoming vehicles.