Safe Decision Or Collision? Using Natural Habituated Interfaces to Increase Traffic Safety

Until fully automated vehicles are widely spread, human drivers will remain indispensable. Until then, driving tasks exceeding the operational boundaries of the vehicle would be delegated to drivers by take-over requests, with the driver as a fallback operator. In cooperative approaches, an appropriate interface is essential for driving safety to prevent accidents. In this study, we propose not to rely on the commonly used touchscreen but on the natural habituated interface (NHI) in the form of the steering wheel, which is highly trained during manual driving. Using safety-critical driving scenarios, we compared the safety, usability, and criticality of both interaction approaches in a driving simulator experiment (N = 26). Our results indicate a significantly lower number of dangerous overtakes leading to accidents; and a higher usability score when using the NHI compared to the touchscreen interface.