NHTSA to Study How Drivers Respond to Vehicle Safety Tech

Federal regulators plan to research how drivers best interact with crash avoidance technology, aiming to improve driving technology interfaces.

The proposal, titled “Crash Avoidance Warning System Human-Machine Interface Research,” comes from a May 16 Federal Register notice filed by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

NHTSA intends to research six forms of human-machine interfaces to improve its “understanding of how crash avoidance warning system … characteristics affect system effectiveness and potential safety impacts.”

Researchers will outfit test vehicles with “instrumentation for recording driver eye glance behavior, vehicle control inputs (steering wheel, accelerator pedal and brake pedal inputs), vehicle position and speed, and turn signal status. During dynamic testing, sensors will determine and record the distances between the test vehicle and surrounding vehicles, as appropriate.”

Participants will be sourced from around Columbus, Ohio, and the testing will involve driving on a test track, public roads or in simulated environments.

This research was first proposed in Nov. 7 notice in the Federal Register and has been updated and expanded prior to submission to the Office of Management and Budget for consideration.