Lee, YM orcid.org/0000-0003-3601-4191, Madigan, R orcid.org/0000-0002-9737-8012, Giles, O et al. (12 more authors) (2021) Road users rarely use explicit communication when interacting in today’s traffic: Implications for Automated Vehicles. Cognition, Technology and Work, 23 (2). pp. 367-380. ISSN 1435-5558
Abstract
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.
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Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2020. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
Keywords: | External-HMI, Human machine interface, Automated vehicles, Communication and interaction, Road safety, Pedestrians |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > Institute for Transport Studies (Leeds) > ITS: Safety and Technology (Leeds) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number EU - European Union 723395 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 03 Jul 2020 15:48 |
Last Modified: | 25 Jun 2023 22:19 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Springer |
Identification Number: | 10.1007/s10111-020-00635-y |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:162333 |
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