Effects of Automobile Head-Up Display Location for Younger and Older Drivers

摘要

Drivers should keep their eyes on the road. That is the central demand of the driving task. Nevertheless, drivers are sometimes unable, or unwilling, to keep their eyes and visual attention focused on the environment ahead of them. Head-up displays (HUDs) can reduce the conflict between the need to watch the road and the need, or desire, to look at various vehicle displays by placing those displays so that they appear, in terms of visual angle as seen from the driver's viewing position, close to the direction of travel. The authors therefore undertook the present study to quantify, for realistic road stimuli, how a driver's sensitivity to the road varies with the angular position of a HUD while the driver is looking at, and devoting attention to, HUD. The study does not address issues such as when HUDs should be used, what they should display, or the relative importance of paying attention to vehicle displays versus the road for safe and efficient driving. It was intended to provide information about the relatively basic question of how display location affects sensitivity to the road when a driver is, for whatever reason, looking at and attending to the display.