Influence of a Driver's Mindset on Understanding Driver-Assist Systems

Recently, manufacturers and researchers have been intensively developing autonomous cars and driver-assist systems. If drivers understand exactly what such systems can do, these intelligent vehicles will reduce accident rates as expected. Ordinary drivers, however, have difficulty fully understanding the behavior of these complex systems. Those who are overconfident in the abilities of their vehicles may have accidents because they leave the control to the vehicle even in dangerous situations that the system cannot handle. In contrast, those who distrust the system may have accidents because the system distracts them from their manual driving. In this study we investigated the influence of first impressions of a lane-keeping system, as an example of a driver-assist system, on the driver's understanding of it. We also demonstrated that first impressions changed the subjects' decision even for the same images and that the subjects' feelings towards the system differ, based on their first experiences, even though they do learn the system with time.