Investigating safety services on the motorway: the role of realistic visualization

Today's in-car information systems are undergoing an evolution towards realistic visualization as well as to real-time telematics services. In a road study with 31 participants we explored the communication of safety information to the driver. We compared three presentation styles: audio-only, audiovisual with a conventional map, and audiovisual with augmented reality. The participants drove on a motorway route and were confronted with recommendations for route following, speed limitation, lane utilization, unexpected route change, and emergency stops. We found significant differences between these safety scenarios in terms of driving performance, eye glances and subjective preference. Comparing the presentation styles, we found that following such recommendations was highly efficient in the audio-only mode. Additional visual information did not significantly increase driving performance. As our subjective preference data also shows, augmented reality does not necessarily create an added value when following safety-related traffic recommendations. However, additional visual information did not interfere with safe driving. Importantly, we did not find evidence for a higher distraction potential by augmented reality; drivers even looked slightly less frequently on the human-machine interface screen in the augmented reality mode than with conventional maps.