Active Heads-up Display based Speed Compliance Aid for Driver Assistance: A Novel Interface and Comparative Experimental Studies

In this paper we introduce a novel laser-based wide-area head-up windshield display, and its evaluation for assisting a driver to comply with speed limits. The paper includes a comparative experimental evaluation with an instrumented vehicle of four different types of display protocols. The result is the dynamic active display - speed control system, a part of the dynamic active display concept of presenting safety-critical visual icons to the driver in a manner that minimizes deviation of his or her gaze direction without adding to unnecessary visual clutter. The experimental system make use of global positioning system (GPS) information to locate the vehicle on an annotated map with speed limits, the novel heads-up-display, and 3 biologically inspired alerts to present speed and speed limit information on this display. Each alert strategy is tested on actual roadways, and compared with the situation of having to rely only on the dash indicators. Given the inclination, drivers who are given an over-speed warning alert reduced the amount of "time-to-slow-back-down" to speed limit by 42% as compared to drivers not given the alert. The use of other alerts produced similar decreases. Ultimately, each of these alerts exhibit strengths in complementing ways, indicating that a combination of these alerts would provide the best strategy for promoting speed limit compliance.

I. Introduction

Speeding is a significant cause of accidents and motor vehicle infractions. One potential solution could be using a “Heads-Up Display” (HUD) to warn the driver of their speed, and if they are in violation of the speed limit. Like the speed-limit reminders on local roads nowadays, simply alerting drivers of their actual speed vs. the current speed limit can surprise them into abiding by the law. The driver will think, “if the road sensor knew that was driving faster, then other people might know I'm driving too fast; I'd better slow down.”