Human Factors of Highly Automated Driving: Results from the EASY and CityMobil Projects

This chapter reports on a series of studies on driver behavior with a highly automated vehicle, conducted as part of the European project CityMobil and the UK project EASY. Using the University of Leeds Driving Simulator, a number of urban and highway scenarios were devised, where lateral and longitudinal control of the vehicle was managed by an automated controller. Drivers’ uptake of non-driving related tasks, their response to critical events, and their ability to resume control of driving, were some of the factors studied. Results showed some differences in performance based on the road environment studied, and suggest that whilst resuming control from automation was manageable when attention was dedicated to the road, diversion of attention by secondary tasks impaired performance when manual control resumed.