Abstract
The purpose of this study is to find out which factor should be taken into consideration most for truck driving in order to give information to a truck driver safely and securely. Generally speaking, the length of time to look at the display seems to be affected by factors such as flexibility of a display location, required driving skills, and attention to the information. Thus the authors make this study with focusing on influence of these factors.
Experiments were made on a truck, a passenger car and a fixed-base driving simulator. First, recognition rate of information and length of time to look at the display while driving the truck and the car were measured to find differences. Then on the truck experiment, relation between attention distribution to the information and the length of time was examined, and on the simulator experiment, difference in the length of time between drivers who have license for driving a truck and those who dont was studied.
As a result it was actually difficult for the truck drivers to look at the information shown in the display while driving because of its low position and a large angle to a drivers eye, and they sometimes missed information without beep. Additionally the average diversion time for the truck is longer than that for the car. But truck-driving skill has no significance in the individual lengths of time.
Then visual information displayed in the truck cabin should be reduced and altered to other means such as auditory output. Otherwise the visual information should be displayed with beep sound, or at least it should be shown for a long while that a truck driver requires looking and understanding. What is required in showing information is not only to give a proper amount of necessary information to drivers in a time they requires to look and understands, but also to assure smooth change of attention. Further all warning sounds should be so coordinated that drivers could understand how urgent the sounds are, and could instantly know where they should direct their attention before looking and understanding what the information tells exactly.