Abstract
In 2030 about one third of the population in Germany will be over 60 years old. Within this demographical progress, not only will the share of the senior drivers who hold a driver’s license increase, but also the availability and utilization frequency of personal vehicles.
In the market there are already many systems available which support active vehicle safety. However there are so far only few products which are specifically developed for senior drivers. Although the importance of senior drivers as a customer group is increasing continuously, the commercialization of such age-based systems is still a barrier for the automobile manufacturer.
The expert surveys of Färber & Färber (1999) show that emergency systems containing information for the visibility improvement of the road space and parking assistance are particularly important for seniors. Moreover, systems for distance control, systems for intervention in driving dynamics, systems for pedestrian and blind spot detection, as well as navigation systems are useful to provide more traffic safety.
However, it is still unclear how senior drivers deal with the modern, complex systems, and to which extent they recognize and benefit from the advantage of these safety systems. Furthermore, the expected safety advantage of the systems may be reduced by the increasing burden and stress that result from the increasing demand for information processing and distraction. The Institute of Automotive Engineering of the RWTH Aachen University research this problem within the scope of the research project “Evaluation of systems for active vehicle safety regarding their influence on safety particularly for the senior driver”. Funding was provided by BASt (Federal Highway Research Institute).
In this article the approach and the results of this project are introduced. Within the project, a market and requirements analysis was carried out, which give detailed information about the existing technologies of active vehicle safety and identifies the needs of senior drivers concerning the application of active safety systems in the vehicle. Based on the analysis, a few systems were selected and tested in field tests regarding their influence on the active vehicle safety with test persons between 55 and 75 years old. Using the test results, the recommended courses of action were formulated, which determine, how these systems must be constructed in order to meet the specific requirements of senior drivers.
Keywords: Advanced driver assistance systems, active safety, senior driver