Naïve Physics in Vehicle Steering Control

Abstract

Wallis and colleagues have reported that drivers have a surprisingly limited understanding of the relation between steering movements and vehicle heading [1-3]. They suggest that popular models based on wholly open-loop or closed-loop control fail to capture a driver's true behavior. One limitation of Wallis et al.'s studies has been that they were all conducted on a straight road. Because of the tendency of passenger vehicles to self-center their steering wheels, it is possible that the effects which they report are due to drivers not actively centering the steering wheel, but simply releasing it. This report describes an experiment conducted on a circular road, which required a non-zero steering wheel angle to be actively selected by the driver at all times. Despite this added requirement, the results were highly consistent with previous experiments carried out on a straight road [1-3], confirming that the errors are due to the drivers' poor understanding of basic vehicle dynamics. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014.