Road users rarely use explicit communication when interacting in today’s traffic: implications for automated vehicles

TY - JOUR

T1 - Road users rarely use explicit communication when interacting in today’s traffic

T2 - implications for automated vehicles

AU - Lee, Yee Mun

AU - Madigan, Ruth

AU - Giles, Oscar

AU - Garach-Morcillo, Laura

AU - Markkula, Gustav

AU - Fox, Charles

AU - Camara, Fanta

AU - Rothmueller, Markus

AU - Vendelbo-Larsen, Signe Alexandra

AU - Rasmussen, Pernille Holm

AU - Dietrich, Andre

AU - Nathanael, Dimitris

AU - Portouli, Villy

AU - Schieben, Anna

AU - Merat, Natasha

N1 - Funding Information: This study was conducted as part of the interACT project, which received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, grant agreement No. 723395. Publisher Copyright: © 2020, The Author(s).

PY - 2021/5/1

Y1 - 2021/5/1

N2 - To be successful, automated vehicles (AVs) need to be able to manoeuvre in mixed traffic in a way that will be accepted by road users, and maximises traffic safety and efficiency. A likely prerequisite for this success is for AVs to be able to communicate effectively with other road users in a complex traffic environment. The current study, conducted as part of the European project interACT, investigates the communication strategies used by drivers and pedestrians while crossing the road at six observed locations, across three European countries. In total, 701 road user interactions were observed and annotated, using an observation protocol developed for this purpose. The observation protocols identified 20 event categories, observed from the approaching vehicles/drivers and pedestrians. These included information about movement, looking behaviour, hand gestures, and signals used, as well as some demographic data. These observations illustrated that explicit communication techniques, such as honking, flashing headlights by drivers, or hand gestures by drivers and pedestrians, rarely occurred. This observation was consistent across sites. In addition, a follow-on questionnaire, administered to a sub-set of the observed pedestrians after crossing the road, found that when contemplating a crossing, pedestrians were more likely to use vehicle-based behaviour, rather than communication cues from the driver. Overall, the findings suggest that vehicle-based movement information such as yielding cues are more likely to be used by pedestrians while crossing the road, compared to explicit communication cues from drivers, although some cultural differences were observed. The implications of these findings are discussed with respect to design of suitable external interfaces and communication of intent by future automated vehicles.

AB - To be successful, automated vehicles (AVs) need to be able to manoeuvre in mixed traffic in a way that will be accepted by road users, and maximises traffic safety and efficiency. A likely prerequisite for this success is for AVs to be able to communicate effectively with other road users in a complex traffic environment. The current study, conducted as part of the European project interACT, investigates the communication strategies used by drivers and pedestrians while crossing the road at six observed locations, across three European countries. In total, 701 road user interactions were observed and annotated, using an observation protocol developed for this purpose. The observation protocols identified 20 event categories, observed from the approaching vehicles/drivers and pedestrians. These included information about movement, looking behaviour, hand gestures, and signals used, as well as some demographic data. These observations illustrated that explicit communication techniques, such as honking, flashing headlights by drivers, or hand gestures by drivers and pedestrians, rarely occurred. This observation was consistent across sites. In addition, a follow-on questionnaire, administered to a sub-set of the observed pedestrians after crossing the road, found that when contemplating a crossing, pedestrians were more likely to use vehicle-based behaviour, rather than communication cues from the driver. Overall, the findings suggest that vehicle-based movement information such as yielding cues are more likely to be used by pedestrians while crossing the road, compared to explicit communication cues from drivers, although some cultural differences were observed. The implications of these findings are discussed with respect to design of suitable external interfaces and communication of intent by future automated vehicles.

KW - Automated vehicles

KW - Communication and interaction

KW - External-HMI

KW - Human machine interface

KW - Pedestrians

KW - Road safety

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85086095140&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1007/s10111-020-00635-y

DO - 10.1007/s10111-020-00635-y

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85086095140

SN - 1435-5558

VL - 23

SP - 367

EP - 380

JO - Cognition, Technology and Work

JF - Cognition, Technology and Work

IS - 2

ER -