UTILITY STUDIES OF A WARNING ALARM SIGNALING THE PRESENCE OF PEDESTRIANS

In relation to an alarm function indicating that a pedestrian is crossing and directing the driver's attention to the crossing pedestrians, a study was undertaken of how a driver is affected by a false alarm and the support effect by the alarm in two experiments using a driving simulator. In Experiment 1, the influence of a false alarm when there was no crossing pedestrian was investigated. A false-alarm rate of 0 to 10% did not affect the crossing pedestrian detection performance. However, when the false alarm was given even though the driver had the information that there is no false alarm (0%), the time to judge the alarm to be false increased. In Experiment 2, the availability of support by the alarm in various conditions was examined. It was found that the support effect of the alarm was significant when the driver was looking aside and moreover when the travelling speed was faster or the crossing pedestrian was further away. For the covering abstract see ITRD E134653.