0000000000671360
AUTHOR
Samuel J. Levulis
Effects of Task-Irrelevant Cars on Judgments of Deceleration and Time-to-Contact During Car-Following
Rear-end collisions represent over 25% of crashes with other moving vehicles (NHTSA, 2005). Factors that potentially contribute to such accidents include a driver’s ability to respond to a lead car’s deceleration and to estimate how much time remains until a collision would occur (DeLucia & Tharanathan, 2009). Prior research (Oberfeld & Hecht, 2008) showed that time-to-contact (TTC) judgments of approaching objects were influenced by task-irrelevant distractor objects. This finding has implications for rear-end collisions when drivers must detect a lead car’s deceleration amidst surrounding cars. However, Oberfeld and Hecht simulated a stationary observer rather than a moving obser…
Effects of Adjacent Vehicles on Judgments of a Lead Car During Car Following.
Objective: Two experiments were conducted to determine whether detection of the onset of a lead car’s deceleration and judgments of its time to contact (TTC) were affected by the presence of vehicles in lanes adjacent to the lead car. Background: In a previous study, TTC judgments of an approaching object by a stationary observer were influenced by an adjacent task-irrelevant approaching object. The implication is that vehicles in lanes adjacent to a lead car could influence a driver’s ability to detect the lead car’s deceleration and to make judgments of its TTC. Method: Displays simulated car-following scenes in which two vehicles in adjacent lanes were either present or absent. Participa…