Automatic Emergency Steering with Distracted Drivers: Effects of Intervention Design

Driver inattention is reported to be one of the most prominent contributing factors to crashes. Modern vehicles feature sensor equipment able to detect an imminent collision, potentially permitting advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) to cope for such human error. Steering interventions, however, make high demands on the human-machine-interaction. Unlike in autonomous emergency braking, conflicting driver input cannot be omitted. Three different ADAS configurations for an automatic emergency steering intervention with small lateral offset were tested against an unassisted baseline condition in a driving experiment with distracted drivers. The results suggest an influence of feedback modalities and actuator choice.