Honking Helps Overcome the Driving Too Slowly Problem in Driving Simulators

摘要

In driving simulators, subjects sometimes drive more slowly than they would on real roads whennot attending to driving. To address this problem, in two experiments, groups of 24 subjects drove through138 intersections with green (53 %), yellow (36 %), or red lights (11 %). The speed limit was 35 mi/hr. Inthe second experiment, the following vehicle honked as needed.The number of honks per subject varied from 0 to 6 for driving too slowly (less than 25 mi/hr) and 0 to8 for delayed responses when a traffic light changed from red to green. Older drivers received 2.4 timesmore honks than younger drivers. Within 5 s after the following vehicle honked between intersections, themean speed driven increased by 5 mi/hr. Similarly, with honking, the speed 5 s after the light changedincreased by 8 mi/hr, both changes that lead to more realistic driving.