The Performance Costs of Digital Head-Up Displays

Motor vehicle manufacturers are installing Head-Up Displays (HUDs) in motor vehicles to provide drivers with a variety of vehicle information such as vehicle speed. In theory, HUDs should assist drivers in monitoring the status of their vehicle while allowing them to spend more time looking at the external scene. However, research in the aviation literature has shown that pilots tend to cognitively tunnel on HUDs to the extent that processing of the external scene is delayed. In the present research, a driving simulator was used to examine whether cognitive tunnelling occurs with analogue and digital HUDs. Participants were better at maintaining vehicle speed when either a digital or an analogue HUD was used as compared to a standard Head-Down Display (HDD) condition. However, the digital HUD resulted in cognitive tunnelling insofar as deviations in lane positioning were greater when speed was displayed in the digital HUD than analogue HUD or HDD conditions.