Drivers’ Perceptions of Events: Implications for Theory and Practice

Abstract

People are known to naturally segment meaningful units of activity into individual events. Though an influential body of work demonstrating the relationship between event perception and human performance in daily tasks does exist, less consideration has been given to ideas that event perception can shape driving performance. This paper offers an introduction to event perception for the transportation community with a study measuring drivers’ perceptions for events in simulated driving scenes. The results demonstrate consistency in drivers’ perceptions of events and that specific features of a driving scene can predict event boundaries. This study also provides some evidence for a relationship between event perception and driving skill as measured by driving frequency. Discussed are the study’s implications to predict and shape the cognitive performance of drivers, along with potential benefits for driver training programs.