Glance Location Research Articles

Field Measurement of Naturalistic Backing Behavior

A series of observations and measurements were made as subjects drove their own vehicles in an assortment of naturalistic backing tasks conducted on public roads in real world driving conditions. As the subjects performed eight backing tasks, the following data were collected: glance direction, hand position, velocity and acceleration, and distance to object in back of the vehicle. The results provide a set of normative data usable by automotive system designers for the design of backing warning systems and other ITS applications. The results of this study were divided into glance direction, backing speed, and time-to-collision. Glance directions were found to vary greatly between tasks. Elderly drivers demonstrated more use of their mirrors and looked over their shoulder less then the young drivers. Looking over the right shoulder was the most frequent glance location across all tasks. Except for the extended backing maneuvers, backing speeds averaged around 4.8 km/h (3 mph). The maximum backing speed for the young drivers was faster than the elderly and males backed faster than females. The time-to-collision was relatively constant over the majority of the backing sequences. Minimum time-to-collision values were generally over 2 seconds.