Human Factors Issues for Automated Highway Systems

Abstract

The automated highway system (AHS) is “the application of vehicle/highway automation technology to provide significant improvements in traffic safety, throughput, travel times, comfort, convenience, energy, and [the] environment.” Under a contract with the Federal Highway Administration to investigate human factors aspects of the design of the AHS, 14 experiments and several analytical tasks have been conducted. The results of the experiments and analytical work on automated-steering failures are reviewed, followed by a summary of the implications of that work for automated highway systems. Then, several critical human factors research issues - from a list of 62 developed during the contract - are presented and discussed.