Driver situation awareness - investigating the effect of passenger experience

Passengers have the opportunity to influence the driver’s situation awareness and promote safer performance. This paper reports an investigation into the influence of passengers on driver situation awareness. 40 two-person teams performed an interactive verbal task, while one team member also undertook a simulated driving task. Half of the drivers were paired with driving-experienced passengers; the others took part with driving-novice passengers. Dependent variables were Verbal Response Time (conversation modulation) and Situation Awareness. Results indicated that driving-novice passengers engaged in relatively more conversation than the driving-experienced passengers. Significant differences were found for total Situational Awareness between driving-experienced and driving-novice groups. Further analysis suggested that both experienced drivers and passengers had significantly better Situational Awareness of perceptual factors than driving-novices. Further, Verbal Response Times were found to be significantly predictive of Situational Awareness. Findings provide some support for the notion that passengers may have a positive effect on driver’s attention in spite of their verbal interactions.