Abstract
This project examines questions of discernibility and presentation methods for safety-critical driving messages. A driving simulator experiment tested two methods of providing safety messages: distinct (with all alerts having distinct auditory and visual components) and master (a common visual and auditory alert) presentations. Participants completed drives that contained a safety critical event, with and without an alert, and reported their perceptions of the alert’s meaning and hazard location. No significant differences were observed in participants’ ability to identify the location of the referent hazard. There were significant differences in participants’ ability to assess the meaning of the alert: the distinct group displayed higher overall performance as compared to the master group. Implications of the study for design guidance and potential future research topics are discussed.
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