A Taxonomy of Strategies For Supporting Time-Sharing With Non-Driving Tasks in Automated Driving

Abstract

Driver distraction is one of the leading causes of vehicle crashes. The introduction of higher levels of vehicle control automation is expected to alleviate the negative effects of distraction by delegating the driving task to automation, thus enabling drivers to engage in non-driving-related tasks more safely. However, before fully automated vehicles are realized, drivers are still expected to play a supervisory role and intervene with the driving task if necessary while potentially having more spare capacity for engaging in non-driving-related tasks. Traditional distraction mitigation perspectives need to be shifted for automated vehicles from mainly preventing the occurrence of non-driving-related tasks to dynamically coordinating time-sharing between driving and non-driving-related tasks. In this paper, we provide a revised and expanded taxonomy of driver distraction mitigation strategies, discuss how the different strategies can be used in an automated driving context, and propose directions for future research in supporting time-sharing in automated vehicles.