Presented at First international conference on driver distraction and inattention (DDI 2009), Gothenburg, Sweden, September 28-29, 2009

Distraction often occurs when attention is on something else besides the primary task of driving. Driver distraction affects driver performance negatively and reduces driver situation awareness (SA) that can lead to collisions. An ecologically designed advisory information interface was developed integrating several Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), forward collision warning (FCW), lane departure warning (LDW), and curve speed warning (CSW) to support driver situational awareness during normal driving. The prototype was tested during three conditions, baseline (no warnings), auditory warnings (critical condition) and both information and auditory warnings (advisory condition). Results show significantly improved driver performance and significantly less triggered warnings for both warning conditions compared to baseline. The advisory condition resulted in slightly better longitudinal control compared to the auditory condition. Participants held significantly better distances to vehicles in front and indicatively had less CSW warnings triggered compared to auditory condition. Subjective results however show that the Chinese drivers preferred auditory condition and felt that advisory condition was irritating and would be distracting to have when driving in real traffic. Both warning types improved safety margins compared to the use of no warnings.