Boring But Demanding: Using Secondary Tasks to Counter the Driver Vigilance Decrement for Partially Automated Driving

We investigated secondary-task-based countermeasures to the vigilance decrement during a simulated partially automated driving (PAD) task, with the goal of understanding the underlying mechanism of the vigilance decrement and maintaining driver vigilance in PAD.

Partial driving automation requires a human driver to monitor the roadway, but humans are notoriously bad at monitoring tasks over long periods of time, demonstrating the vigilance decrement in such tasks. The overload explanations of the vigilance decrement predict the decrement to be worse with added secondary tasks due to increased task demands and depleted attentional resources, whereas the underload explanations predict the vigilance decrement to be alleviated with secondary tasks due to increased task engagement.

Participants watched a driving video simulating PAD and were required to identify hazardous vehicles throughout the 45-min drive. A total of 117 participants were assigned to three different vigilance-intervention conditions including a driving-related secondary task (DR) condition, a non-driving-related secondary task (NDR) condition, and a control condition with no secondary tasks.

Overall, the vigilance decrement was shown over time, reflected in increased response times, reduced hazard detection rates, reduced response sensitivity, shifted response criterion, and subjective reports on task-induced stress. Compared to the DR and the control conditions, the NDR displayed a mitigated vigilance decrement.

This study provided convergent evidence for both resource depletion and disengagement as sources of the vigilance decrement.

The practical implication is that infrequent and intermittent breaks using a non-driving related task may help alleviate the vigilance decrement in PAD systems.