ABSTRACT
Forward Collision Warning (FCW) systems have been designed to enhance road safety by reducing the number of rear-end collisions. Nevertheless, little is known about how drivers adapt their behavior and physiology over time when using this kind of system. To investigate these effects, driving data were collected from the Beijing Jiaotong University (BJTU) driving simulator. This study seeks to investigate the impacts of the real-time FCW system on the behavior and EEG of drivers under poor visibility. Thirty-six drivers participated in this simulator study. Findings suggest that exposure to the FCW system has promising safety benefits manifested in improved driver behavior and response by influencing their brain electrical activity and shortening the brake reaction time. Nonetheless, the effectiveness of early warning decreases with the increase in emergency level, and the FCW system may have introduced little to cope with sufficiently urgent scenarios (TTC < 3s). Therefore, participants' physiological and behavioral responses to FCW were used to indicate their risk tendency in driving, which could be further exploited as a potential parameter of FCW system design.
