ABSTRACT
The crashes caused by the presence of a vehicle in the car's blind spot areas account for about 20% of the overall lane change crashes. Recently, in order to overcome the issue, car manufacturers introduced some Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), detecting other vehicles in the blind spot areas and warning the drivers. Those systems, generally called Blind Spot Information System (BLIS) or Lane Change Warning (LCW) are supposed to be helpful for the drivers but, up to now, little information is available on drivers’ opinions and the road safety impact of such systems. In order to fill this gap, focus groups interviews were conducted with the aim of collecting drivers’ opinions about BLIS. Overall, the participants were satisfied about the help provided by the system during the lane change task. Furthermore, they admitted that the lane change behaviour is not modified by the system. However, it appeared that, in the long-term, behavioural adaptations might occur: drivers could rely on the system and carry out the lane change without checking the mirror, only based on the information provided by the system. Based on these results, further research is required on the topic.
