Gaze guidance reduces the number of vehicle-pedestrian collisions in a driving simulator

Driving and visual perception are tightly linked. Every moment, a multitude of visual stimuli compete for the driver's limited attentional resources. Despite modern safety measures, traffic accidents still remain a major source of fatalities. A large part of these casualties occur in accidents for which driver distraction was cited as the main cause [National Highway Traffic Safety Administration September 2010]. We propose to help drivers by building an augmented vision system that can guide eye movements towards regions which may constitute a source of danger. In a first study, we have already shown that largely unobtrusive gaze guidance techniques used in a driving simulator help drivers better distribute their attentional resources and drive more safely [Pomarjanschi et al. 2011]. Current experiments investigate the efficiency of more general cues, that only signal the direction in which a critical event might occur. Results of these experiments will be reported at the conference.