Long-term Effect of Experiencing System Malfunction on Driver Take-over Control in Conditional Driving Automation

The paper aims to investigate how driving experience on system malfunction impacts driver take-over control on a long-term basis when he or she uses the conditionally driving automation. We designed a two-factorial (driving experience $\times$ knowledge of system limitation) driving simulator experiment at training and practicing phases between which there was a two-month period. All seventy-two people ($36.2 \pm 15.6$ years old) participate into the data collection via driving simulators. The experimental results indicated that participants with the malfunction-experience at training reacted to a malfunction occurring at the two-month-later practicing phase. It is demonstrated that the experience was contributable for a long term. Also, it was shown that instructing the concept of the request to intervene (RtI) was attributed to rapidly taking-over car control. The effect of knowledge was significantly shown at the early training stage, and it was getting less as the driving experience was being accumulated. Furthermore, drivers' subjective assessment suggested that driver trust to driving automation would change with the accumulated experience. Meanwhile, the change was influenced by the acquired knowledge and experience at the training phase. Consequently, this study revealed the importance of experiencing system malfunction and instructing the knowledge at a learning/training period that will be helpful for drivers to achieve moderate driver-automation interaction.