Abstract
Recent advances in technology have meant that an increasing number of vehicle driving tasks are becoming automated. Such automation poses new problems for the human factors specialist, with particular concern about the effects of automation on driving performance. A body of research is building up which suggests that drivers cannot recover from automation failure, yet they can cope with a similarly critical scenario in manual driving. The current paper investigates whether recovery from automation failure is affected by level of driver skill. Learner drivers were compared to expert drivers under two levels of automation, with a failure of longitudinal control in each condition. Clear differences in response patterns were found, with more experts and fewer learners responding to the failure under high levels of automation. It is concluded that the issue of skill with automation is one which requires more attention than is currently forthcoming from the human factors community.
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