Enhancing the reproduction of road signs in automotive HMIs to protect children

Due to their different risk assessment, e.g. running for a ball or pushing each other to the road, children are one of the highly endangered vulnerable road users. Most accidents occur on the way to school and close to the school bus stops. To protect children early information for car drivers may be helpful to slow down traffic before reaching a critical area such as a school bus stop. To enhance the acceptance among car drivers the information should be displayed as soon as possible, for example once children are present at the bus stop. Information about children as a new message in automotive Human-Machine-Interfaces (HMI) should be based on existing display and information concepts like integrated icons in dashboards or highlighted points of interests on the navigation map. Using an iterative design process with different design loops and evaluations a user-centered HMI is developed. This paper describes the development of a highly usable and accepted automotive HMI displaying road signs to protect children at school bus stops.