Listen! There are other road users close to You -Improve the traffic awareness of truck drivers

Abstract

As the amount of good transportation on road is increasing the accidents involving heavy trucks and other road users are also increasing. To make me truck driver aware of other road users close to the truck is very important to avoid accidents. Present study tested different auditory icons that were representing different road users and presented in 3 dimensions in the truck cockpit to see if such design could improve the driver traffic awareness in trucks. A prototype system including four different type-of sound themes has been developed to present the road users such as pedestrian, cyclists, motorcycles and other vehicles. The setting was tested on subjects and integrated in a truck-simulation at Volvo Technology Corporation. An experiment was conducted to test whether these 3D sounds can improve the driver's traffic situation awareness. The results suggest that natural or realistic sounds (auditory icon) are most suitable to this application due to their intuitiveness, distinguish ability and relatively low degree of disturbance. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.