Effects of Haptic Brake Pulse Warnings on Driver Behavior during an Intersection Approach

Intersection crashes account for nearly a quarter of all police reported crashes, and 39% of these result in injury or death. In this experiment, haptic warnings were explored as an alternative to auditory and visual warnings as part of an overall effort to reduce the number of intersection related crashes. The study objective was to determine the haptic brake pulse warning candidate that most often results in the driver successfully stopping for an intersection. Five candidate brake pulse warnings were tested; these varied with respect to length and number of pulses. Significant differences were found between haptic conditions for peak and constant deceleration. Participants receiving the haptic warning were 38 times more likely to stop than those receiving no warning.