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Abstract:
Drivers‘ steering responses when meeting another car were investigated using a driving simulation. The participants drove on a single-lane, straight road and were instructed to stay as accurately as possible in the middle of the lane. Three conditions were employed to examine a potential influence of another car on the deviation from the center-line: (i) an oncoming car driving parallel to the lane, (ii) a stationary car parked next to the lane, and (iii) an overtaking car. Participants were explicitly instructed to ignore the presence of the other vehicle. Performance was compared with a control condition, in which no other car was present. The results confirm previous findings in real traffic, in which there is a general tendency to steer away from an approaching vehicle. In our experiments, this diverging away from the center-line reached its maximum shortly after the other car has passed. Additionally, our results show that a stationary car provoked a nominally higher deviation when c
ompared with an oncoming car. Surprisingly, when the drivers were overtaken by another car, they tended to steer towards the other vehicle. In addition to the obvious risk avoidance behavior, also perceptual factors may play a role when meeting another car. The maximum deviation occurred at an instance with effectively no risk potential (ca. 2 sec after passing). On the other hand, the bias to steer towards an overtaking car can be explained by a tendency to "steer where you look" (see Readinger et al., TWK 2001).
