The Effect of Advanced Traveler Information Display Modality on Driver Performance

To achieve the desired goals of improved safety and convenience for Advanced Traveler Information Systems (ATIS), significant information will necessarily be provided to the driver. A primary ATIS design issue is the display modality (i.e., visual, auditory, or the combination) selected for providing this information. The objective of this research was to determine which display modality was most beneficial under a number of circumstances. A simulator experiment was conducted to determine the effects of driver age, display modality, driving load, and information complexity on driving performance, navigation performance, and emergency response performance. For driving performance, the multi-modality display generally resulted in better performance for both speed maintenance and safe driving behavior. For navigation tasks, the multi-modality display resulted in the best performance for both total correct turns and number of navigation-related errors. For emergency response displays, the multi-modality and the auditory displays resulted in faster reaction times than the visual display for detecting warning information, while information presented on the multi-modality display resulted in fewer errors than the auditory display.