Is Drivers' Situation Awareness Influenced by a Fully Automated Driving Scenario?

This paper presents results from a study conducted for the European FP6 project CityMobil. The experiment described here is part of four cross-site experiments designed to study the human factors issues associated with various degrees of automated driving. Thirty-nine drivers were asked to drive a simulated route with two zones in a within-subjects design, with a main factor of automation. Driver behaviour in “manual” driving, where all driving manoeuvres and decisions were made by the drivers, was compared to “highly automated” driving, where lateral and longitudinal control of the driving task was dictated by the “automated system”. In this condition, drivers were asked to take their foot off the pedals and their hands off the steering wheel and allow the vehicle to be driven for them. Situation awareness in both driving environments was measured by computing drivers‟ response time to a series of unexpected/critical traffic events. Results showed that drivers‟ response to these events was significantly later in the highly automated condition, implying both reduced situation awareness and perhaps an excessive trust in the automated system.