Distracted Driving, Inattentional Blindness, and the Analysis of Failed Pedestrian Detection

Inattentional blindness is a failure to notice unexpected events due to an individual performing an attention-demanding task, even if the unexpected event occurs in the individual’s line-of- sight. While operating a motor vehicle, drivers must pay attention to other moving vehicles while remaining vigilant to their surrounding environment in order to detect and process critical information related to the driving task. As the visual complexity of the driving environment increases, the ability to detect critical targets degrades. This study seeks to understand the effects of inattentional blindness on driver performance. Because of these attentional limitations, the research focused on the visual complexity of the roadway environment and the relationship of the moving vehicles on driver attention. By incorporating a dual-task paradigm of visual search along with vehicle tracking, factors outside of the vehicle cockpit were examined in relation to a driver’s performance and reaction time. Using a state-of-the-art driving simulator, 180 participants were asked to track neighboring vehicle movements under various roadway environments with the independent variables being number of vehicles to track, the visual complexity of the environment, and the expectations for a critical target. Once a baseline driving behavior was established, a pedestrian was programmed to run into the driver’s path. Tracking-accuracy, brake initiation, swerving, and acknowledgement of pedestrians were used to assess driver performance. This research advances the understanding of how drivers allocate attention between various stimuli and the trade-offs between a driver’s focus on an assigned task and external objects within the roadway environment. Moreover, the results of this research lend insight into how to construct roadway environments that encourage driver attention toward the most immediate and relevant information to reduce both vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-pedestrian interactions.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AND10 Vehicle User Characteristics. Alternate title: Distracted Driving, Inattentional Blindness, and Analysis of Failed Pedestrian Detection
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Ericson, Justin M
  • Beck, Melissa R
  • Parr, Scott A
  • Wolshon, Brian
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 93rd Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC
  • Date: 2014-1-12 to 2014-1-16
• Date: 2014

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 17p
• Monograph Title: TRB 93rd Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Blindness; Distraction; Driver performance; Driving simulators; Pedestrian vehicle crashes; Pedestrians; Traffic safety
• Subject Areas: Highways; Pedestrians and Bicyclists; Safety and Human Factors; I83: Accidents and the Human Factor;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01519538
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 14-2200
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Mar 26 2014 10:07AM