Safety in numbers: Target prevalence affects the detection of vehicles during simulated driving

Beanland, Vanessa; Lenné, Michael G.; Underwood, Geoffrey · 2014 · OpenAlex-citations

DOI: 10.3758/s13414-013-0603-1

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Summary

This study investigates whether the "low-prevalence effect"—the tendency for observers to miss rare targets in visual search tasks—applies to dynamic driving environments. While previous research established robust prevalence effects in static tasks like airport security screening, it remained unclear if these effects persist in continuous, interactive tasks where drivers must detect hazards in real-time. The authors hypothesized that target prevalence influences detection speed and accuracy during driving, independent of physical salience. The researchers conducted a driving simulator experiment with 40 licensed drivers. The study employed a two-phase design: a preexposure drive and a detection drive. Target vehicles were motorcycles and buses, chosen for their differing sizes and typical road prevalence. Target prevalence was manipulated both within and between subjects; half the participants experienced high motorcycle prevalence (120 motorcycles, 6 buses) during the detection drive, while the other half experienced high bus prevalence (120 buses, 6 motorcycles). Target color (high-salience white vs. low-salience gray) and location (left, right, oncoming) were also varied. The primary dependent variable was detection distance, serving as a proxy for response time, as targets moved continuously toward the driver. The results demonstrated a significant main effect of vehicle type and a significant interaction between vehicle type and prevalence. Drivers detected high-prevalence targets from significantly farther distances than low-prevalence targets for both motorcycles and buses. This indicates that increasing target prevalence made them easier to detect, regardless of their physical size or color. While buses were generally detected earlier than motorcycles due to their larger size, and white vehicles were detected earlier than gray ones due to higher salience, the prevalence effect held across these variations. Misses were rare, occurring primarily for low-salience, low-prevalence targets. Additionally, preexposure to a specific vehicle type improved overall detection speed for that type, though the effect was most pronounced for buses. The findings confirm that the low-prevalence effect extends to dynamic, real-world-like tasks such as driving. The authors conclude that target prevalence influences drivers' internal decision criteria, making them faster to register "target present" responses for frequent stimuli. This suggests that drivers' attention is biased toward prevalent hazards, potentially at the expense of detecting rare but dangerous targets like motorcycles. The study implies that improving the detection of rare hazards may require interventions that alter drivers' expectations or selection history, rather than solely relying on increasing the physical salience of the hazard.

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Topics

Ranked by relevance to this paper. Hover a topic for its definition.

• visual search
• motorcycle conspicuity
• inattentional change blindness
• looked but failed to see
• vigilance
• hazard perception

Information type

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• Empirical Findings: observational prevalence
• Theoretical Contribution: theory or model