Study: Driver Aids Can Make You Miss Things. Like Giant Pink Teddy Bears Speeding By

By Sean Tucker 03/12/2021 3:00pm

Ah, to be a scientist. To say intense, scientific research-based things like “The giant teddy bear on the back of the vehicle helps give us an objective measure of the driver’s focus that’s relevant to driving and doesn’t interfere with how that person normally drives.”

The giant pink teddy bear, to be precise.  In the high-visibility vest.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), one of two major driving safety laboratories in the United States, is behind the stuffed animal test. The Institute’s latest driver safety study involves a control group and motion-sensing cameras that track divers’ eyes. But the key to the system is the nameless bear.

Driver-Assist Attention-Deficit Studied

The study evaluates whether drivers tend to take their attention off the road when driver assistance systems in use. Study designers use a 2019 Mercedes-Benz C300 equipped with a Level 2 driver assist for their study. Level 2 performs key tasks like lane centering and accelerating and braking to keep the pace of the car ahead. But, crucially, it still requires drivers to give their full attention to the road. They must be prepared to take over at a moment’s notice to avoid an accident.

Top five driver assists worth having

The study’s authors sorted 31 drivers into three groups – those who regularly drove with Level 2 assistance systems and who would drive with them engaged for the test, those who had little to no experience with the driver aids and would drive with them engaged for the test, and a control group of those with little to no experience with Level 2 automation who would drive without the system engaged.

They then asked each driver to drive the Mercedes for an hour. Three times during their drive, a vehicle with a giant pink teddy bear in a high-vis jacket strapped to the back passed close to the test car, making sure to stay in easy view for at least 30 seconds. Cameras inside the test car tracked drivers’ eyes to see whether they noticed the bear.

In case the cameras missed something, drivers were also asked after their drive whether they’d noticed anything unusual.

Newer Level 2 Drivers Less Attentive

An interesting pattern emerged in the data. The IIHS explains, “More than twice as many inexperienced Level 2 automation users driving with the system turned on failed to recall the bear at all compared with the other groups. Almost all of the frequent Level 2 automation users who had the vehicle’s system switched on noticed the bear. They were also more likely than the other groups to correctly recall the number of times it had appeared during the drive.”

The conclusion suggests that drivers new to having automated assistance might rely on it too much. The study suggests “Inexperienced drivers may have more difficulty keeping track of what’s going on around them when using the unfamiliar technology than when driving without it.”

The result is slightly counter to other research, which has often shown that drivers grow more complacent the longer they rely on the assistance features.