A comprehensive safety analysis for gaze fixation of drivers to outside scene

Abstract: Driver distraction is one of the major contributing factors for crashes and near crashes. Research shows that driver distraction for as small as 2 seconds can result in safety critical events. Unfortunately, there are limited research in understanding the effects of outside objects in driver distraction. In this work we mainly concentrate on gaze fixation to objects that are located outside the vehicle. We used crash/ near crash (CNC) events, as well as baseline (BL) driving events from SHRP2 naturalistic driving study (NDS) to understand gaze fixation patterns. We selected a total of 666 events from CNC and 446 events from BL events. To reduce variability, these events are selected for cases where the driver gaze is fixated through the right windshield. We performed statistical analysis on both the sets of events for gaze fixation. When comparing between CNC and BL, the drivers mostly struggle to perceive information of dynamic objects in the scene, information from billboards and intersection scene, as well as for driving tasks while changing lanes, maneuvering to avoid other objects including pedestrians, taking a turn.

Keywords: road safety, distraction, crash analysis, driver cognition, driver behaviors, visual saliency, SHRP2

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1002481

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