Driver Behavior and Performance Using an Infrared Night Vision Enhancement System;Final rept. Mar 00-Apr 01

摘要

Nighttime driving is unsafe due in part to the poor visibility of low contrast objects. Night Vision Enhancement Systems (or NVESs) are one possible solution to this problem. However, there are concerns regarding driver distraction, object recognition, behavior compensation and direct vision impairments that needed to be addressed. Incorporating lessons learned from a preliminary NVES study, crash analyses, and prior NVES research, a field experiment was designed to evaluate NVES. The evaluation used the 2000 Cadillac DeVille with Night Vision (trademark) conducted on both public roads and closed roads in a local park. Younger and Older drivers were asked to provide separate detection and recognition responses for objects detected with headlights or indirectly via NVES and report speed limits. For half of the trials, the NVES display was blocked from view to assess unaided baseline performance. Targets consisted of traffic cones and pedestrians. Cones were painted black or white and were heated. Pedestrians wore either white or black clothing and were either stationary or waving their arms. On some trials drivers were presented with targets being exposed to controlled headlight glare from headlight rigs constructed so as to mimic actual low beam headlights. The results suggest that performance enhancements are situation-specific. An enhancement of between 200 and 450 feet was obtained for pedestrians detected and recognized in the presence of glare but only for Younger drivers. In all other conditions, performance either marginally improved (by about 100 feet) with NVES or there was no statistically significant change.