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Abstract

The interaction between humans and vehicles is crucial in the design of passenger car architecture. Forward visibility for the driver is a key factor that significantly impacts overall situational awareness, enabling drivers to comprehend and anticipate the actions of other road users and adjust their behavior accordingly. This paper explores the influence of architectural parameters on drivers’ forward visibility in passenger cars through a combination of empirical testing and simulation models. We gathered 130 primary data points via a static visibility assessment involving 65 volunteers across four different vehicles, capturing volunteer metadata, vehicle architectural parameters, and forward visibility of the driver over the bonnet. Volunteers’ anthropometric data were scanned within the vehicle and accurately mapped to a virtual vehicle environment. We introduce a metric, FVR (Forward Visibility Range), to quantify forward visibility and developed theoretical formulations by integrating architectural variables that affect visibility performance. A benchmarking study of 156 passenger cars was conducted, and their FVR was evaluated across selected anthropometric profiles. We identified specific combinations of architectural variables that enhance forward visibility performance. Theoretical formulations were validated against test data, confirming their stability and robustness. The findings presented in this paper are instrumental in establishing vehicle targets and specifications for forward visibility during the early stages of architectural design.

Keywords

forward visibility passenger car ergonomics testing and simulation Forward Visibility Range (FVR)mathematical formulation

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