Reaction-time task during car-following with an active gas pedal

An experiment was carried out to investigate the influence of a reaction-time task on car-following with an active gas pedal. Two sessions were held, the first one to investigate reaction times, the second one to investigate task effects. Under the conditions of the experiments, stiffness feedback yielded lower, and force feedback higher than base-line reaction-times. From the second session it was concluded that the reaction-time task had not significantly influenced car-following performance for stiffness feedback or force feedback. Control effort for the stiffness feedback condition remained significantly lower with and without reaction-time task as compared to the base-line condition. Both sessions showed that drivers tend to adopt a force-task strategy with the haptic feedback systems - i.e. they tried to maintain a constant force on the gas pedal.