Evaluating Older Drivers’ Reaction to Forward Collision Warning (FCW) and Automated Emergency Braking (AEB) Under Conditions of Distraction Using a Driving Simulation
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Summary
This report documents Phase 1 of a research project aimed at evaluating how older drivers (aged 65 and older) react to Forward Collision Warning (FCW) and Automated Emergency Braking (AEB) systems under conditions of visual distraction. The study is motivated by the rising number of traffic fatalities in the United States, particularly those caused by human factors such as driver inattention and delayed hazard recognition. Older adults are a rapidly growing demographic of licensed drivers who experience age-related declines in attentional control, visual processing, and cognitive flexibility, which increase crash risks. While Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) like FCW and AEB are designed to mitigate these risks, adoption among older adults remains low due to concerns about usability, complexity, and loss of control. This project seeks to address the gap in understanding how these systems function in practice for this demographic by assessing behavioral effectiveness, trust, and user acceptance. The reported work focuses on the preparatory activities required to establish the experimental foundation for the study. The research team conducted a comprehensive literature review to identify gaps regarding older adults and ADAS, noting that while FCW and AEB can significantly reduce crash rates, barriers to adoption include perceived intrusiveness and lack of awareness. The team developed pre- and post-experiment questionnaires using Qualtrics to capture demographic data, baseline attitudes toward ADAS, and post-simulation reflections on system effectiveness, trust, and comfort. An Institutional Review Board (IRB) protocol was drafted and approved, outlining ethical standards, recruitment strategies for a demographically balanced sample of older drivers, and data security measures. Additionally, the team designed and programmed interactive driving scenarios using SimCreatorDX® software within a high-fidelity Realtime Technologies RDS-2000 Full Cab Driving Simulator. These scenarios simulate realistic urban driving conditions with potential forward collisions, allowing for the testing of FCW, AEB, and combined systems under both distracted and non-distracted conditions. The key outcomes of this phase include a validated knowledge base informing the experiment design, ready-to-deploy questionnaires, IRB approval for human subject research, and functional driving simulation scenarios. The report does not present empirical results from driver testing, as participant recruitment and data collection are scheduled for Phase 2. The significance of this work lies in its potential to inform the design and deployment of inclusive safety technologies that account for age-related cognitive differences. By establishing a rigorous experimental framework, the project aims to generate evidence on the behavioral effectiveness of ADAS for older adults, ultimately supporting strategies to enhance mobility, reduce crash risk, and align with national safety goals such as the U.S. DOT’s Safe System Approach.
Key finding
The study has completed its preparatory phase by establishing the experimental infrastructure, including approved ethical protocols, validated survey instruments, and functional driving simulation scenarios, with data collection scheduled for Phase 2.
Methodology
simulator
Provenance
The full processing record for this entry. Every stage of this paper's journey through the pipeline is logged — what ran, with which tool and model, how many attempts it took, and when it last completed. Discovered via bulk_ingest_rosap on 2026-05-23 (81 acquisition events logged).
| Stage | Outcome | Tool | Model | Prompt | Attempts | Completed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| discover | success | rosap | — | — | 2 | 2026-05-23 |
| archive | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-05-23 |
| extract | success | cached | — | — | 3 | 2026-06-10 |
| clean | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-01 |
| chunk | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-01 |
| embed | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-02 |
| enrich | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-05-23 |
| promote | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-05-23 |
| summarize | success | llm | qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant | summ-v5 | 79 | 2026-06-10 |
| tag | success | vector_similarity | — | — | 19 | 2026-06-11 |
| verify | success | — | — | — | 2 | 2026-06-10 |
Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-10; verification: verified.
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- Theoretical Contribution: computational model