CONTACT US: Contact info
|
Citation |
Zwahlen HT. Transp. Res. Rec. 1993; 1403: 14-22. |
|
Copyright |
(Copyright © 1993, Transportation Research Board, National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences USA, Publisher SAGE Publishing) |
|
DOI |
unavailable |
PMID |
unavailable |
|
Abstract |
The U.S. driver education and training literature was reviewed to identify rules and recommendations with regard to driver eye scanning behavior and strategies, where drivers ought to fixate their eyes when driving, specifically when driving through a curve. In addition, driver eye scanning behavior was recorded and analyzed for nine drivers driving through right curves with radii of 73.15 m (240 ft) (unlighted Interstate entrance and exit ramps, 270-deg turns) at night with low beams. An instrumented car with a corneal reflection technique television eye scanning system was used. Each driver made a number of runs through the curves at an average speed of 41.8 km/hr (26 mph), and the driver eye fixation sequences were analyzed for three to eight runs per driver, yielding 51 analyzed runs. Of most importance for the eye fixation sequence analysis were the eye fixation positions on the curves ahead of the car. Besides the eye fixation sequences analyzed in this study, previously analyzed spatial and temporal eye scanning data from the same subjects were used to compare the eye scanning rules with the actual observed eye scanning behavior. Matrices and histograms were established to indicate the conditional frequencies for forward- and backward-progressing eye fixation sequences, given a previous type of eye fixation sequence. The results showed that the expected number of consecutive forward eye fixations (including forward-ending eye fixations) is 1.89, while that of backward eye fixations (including backward-ending eye fixations) is 1.26. The results of the exploratory study indicate that drivers use both forward and backward eye fixation sequences and that there appears to exist no predictable, simple, systematic eye fixation sequence patterns within a driver (within a run or between runs) or between drivers when driving through a curve. Since no such sequence was discovered, it may be tentatively concluded that various eye fixation sequences and strategies provide adequate visual input for proper curve driving. Therefore, there is probably no need for very specific recommendations for objects- or sequence-oriented eye fixation for curve driving, or even for driving on a straight section of a highway. Language: en |