Engineers design vehicles that are safe, reliable and fuel efficient. But engineers must also consider the human factor: the driver.
Since driver errors contribute to more than 90 per cent of vehicle crashes, designing operator feedback systems may help drivers improve their behind-the-wheel habits and make our roads safer.
Enter Industrial Engineering Professor Birsen Donmez (MIE), who in partnership with Toyota’s Collaborative Safety Research Center (CSRC) has received $813,000 in funding over three years to investigate driver feedback systems. She is the only Canadian researcher to receive funding from the CSRC.
“Feedback is currently not tailored to the individual and is not provided consistently, thus it may be absent in some situations,” said Professor Donmez. “But emerging vehicle technology, such as eye trackers, can improve responses to road events and inhibit potentially risky behaviours.”
Professor Donmez’s research group will work to determine how feedback systems should be designed to help prevent risky behaviors, and without imposing additional workload or a potential distraction to the driver.
Her team is considering what risky behaviours should trigger feedback, what information should be provided to the driver, as well as when, how and where feedback should be presented. For example, feedback can be auditory, such as a ‘beep,’ or visual, presented on a dashboard or a head-up display. Their research will consider individual differences, such as being susceptible to distractions or having risk-taking tendencies, as well as how drivers adapt to feedback over time.
The project will include a series of experiments conducted in a newly acquired driving simulator facility, which enables testing of drivers’ reactions as well as cognitive and physiological responses to various situations in a controlled environment. Transport Canada will provide additional in-kind equipment support valued at $250,000 for the last phase of the project, which will involve on-road testing of the most promising feedback alternatives identified in the simulator experiments.
Toyota’s Collaborative Safety Research Center (CSRC) works with leading North American universities, hospitals, research institutions and federal agencies on research projects aimed at developing and bringing to market advanced safety technologies that help reduce the number of traffic fatalities and injuries. Toyota has committed approximately $50 million over the next five years. Published research will be made available to federal agencies, the industry and academia.
