An advanced driver warning framework incorporating educational warnings

Abstract

Car accidents are a serious problem. The measures currently being taken are not very successful in preventing accidents. To reduce the number of accidents, driver support and warning systems are built. Part of their solution is the use of education, in the form of educational warning systems. However, issuing warnings might distract the driver from the driving task exactly when the stress level is high and immediate action is required. This work concentrates on educational warning systems in the framework of cars and driving. It proposes an innovative design that is demonstrated via a prototype of an educational warning system. One of the main objectives of the research presented here is to test if delaying warnings and feedback (to prevent stress and distraction) improves the learning ability and the performance of drivers using them. Are delayed (educational) warnings superior to immediate warnings? Using the 300M IT Edition, an experiment to test the effects of delayed feedback on the learning process in two driving tasks was carried out. The findings showed significant evidence of better performance overall, while yielding marginal significant of improvement in task understanding, and some indication, although not significant, of faster and stronger improvement in task performance of the delayed feedback group. The main impact of the work is some evidence that delayed warnings in driver learning tasks are superior. More importantly, it is not evident that it is inferior, which makes it preferable to immediate feedback that may distract the driver from the driving task.