Because of the road safety consequences, ergonomics of in-vehicle systems interface must be carefully studied, more specifically by taking into account drivers characteristics, in order to meet the various potential requirements for a correct use. In this paper, various aspects of legibility and detection of displayed messages have been studied for young adults and elderly in driving situations supported by dash-board implemented systems. Evaluation was done by considering relations between types of visual information and driver's visual strategies. Experimentations have been conducted in real road environment and in driving simulator. Results show the important sensitivity for the elderly to poor conditions of poor conditions of information presentation, or, in other words, the possibility to limit the difference due to age when conditions were optimised. Advantages concerning the symbolic rather than writtem information display are also discussed, including ambiguity aspects for the understanding of this type of message. (A)
Abstract