Experts at Loughborough’s Ergonomics and Safety Research Institute (ESRI) have been looking at drivers’ reactions to different alarm systems, to determine which make driving safest.
John Richardson, of ESRI, said: “We do lots of work relating to car safety, although it usually involves looking at the structure of the vehicle. In this case, we were looking at driver behaviour and how this new alarm system will work to make vehicles safer.
“The idea is to make a system that people trust and want to use.”
Researchers looked at drivers’ responses when faced with early warning alarms, just-in-time alarms and unreliable alarms. They also looked at how drivers’ behaviour was affected by the speed of the car in front.
Overall, drivers responded better to early alarms. Trust in these alarms stayed high even if the system occasionally gave ‘false’ alarms.
SOURCE: Loughborough press release.
Why not just have the car apply the brakes automatically rather than sound an alarm, that precludes driver error, surely?
I’ve had an in-car alarm available for over 30 years, since I was 16 and started driving. It’s called my mother, and it doesn’t matter that I’m over 50 and a never-accident driver. When visiting and she rides with me, her foot tries to push through the floorboard and there’s the occasional, “Oh-my-gosh!!!”
On a more serious and relevant note, this is relevant. About a year back was when she did her last big, “Oh-my-gosh!!!” It was for a situation that I’d already noted many seconds before, set a strategy for handling, and moved on. But her ALARM! then distracts me from the current situation, whatever it is, and makes me start searching for the cause of the ALARM! In that case, the ALARM! was over an old threat, well averted.
Had the ALARM! been during a situation critical for other reasons, it might have been sufficient distraction to cause a crash.
To put it more simply, in addition to being early, an in-car alarm needs to be fairly specific, and not just “Oh-my-gosh!!!”