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Abstract

Twenty-five percent of traffic accidents are rear-end collisions. An important factor that may contribute toward such collisions is the collision-avoidance action gap. Prior studies have failed to investigate the factors that affect judgments of collision-avoidance action gap. However, findings from prior research indicate that observers are typically poor in making time-to-contact judgments when a scene depicts non-constant velocity motion compared with constant velocity motion. Therefore, the primary purpose of this study was to investigate differences in judgments of collision-avoidance action gap during constant and non-constant velocity motion. In addition, the effects of starting headway, viewing condition and gap closure rate on such judgments were studied. Results indicated that judgments of collision-avoidance action gap were relatively poor during non-constant velocity motion compared with constant velocity motion. Also, the pattern of results for viewing condition and gap closure rate were consistent with prior studies on time-to-contact judgments. Implications of the findings for the design of intelligent collision-avoidance warning systems have been discussed.

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Effects of Constant and Non-Constant Velocity Motion on Judgments of Collision-Avoidance Action Gap

Abstract

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