EFFECTS OF AUTOMOBILE HEAD-UP DISPLAY LOCATION FOR YOUNGER AND OLDER DRIVERS

Drivers should keep their eyes on the road. That is the central demand of the driving task. Nevertheless, drivers are sometimes unable, or unwilling, to keep their eyes and visual attention focused on the environment ahead of them. Head-up displays (HUDs) can reduce the conflict between the need to watch the road and the need to look at various vehicle displays by placing those displays so that they appear, in terms of visual angle as seen from the driver's viewing position, close to the direction of travel. The purpose of this study was to quantify, for realistic road stimuli, how a driver's sensitivity to the road varies with the angular position of a HUD while the driver is looking at, and devoting attention to, HUD. The report provides information about the relatively basic question of how display location affects sensitivity to the road when a driver is, for whatever reason, looking at and attending to the display.