The major objectives of the report were: · To review the literature on the concept of situation awareness and associated measurement approaches to identify their applicability to the driving domain. · To identify, summarise and analyse the existing literature on situation awareness and road safety and determine whether situation awareness adds to the understanding of driver behaviour beyond existing theory and models. · To determine the usefulness of the concept of situation awareness in understanding issues in the emerging literature on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSs). · To recommend how situation awareness may be applied in future road safety research. A search of the relevant literature was conducted using the following databases: TRIS (Traffic Research Information Services), PsycInfo, National Technical Information Service (NTIS), National Highway and Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSITUATION AWARENESS) and the World Wide Web (www). Keywords included combinations of situation awareness, highway safety, driving performance, information processing, cellular telephones/phones, intelligent transportation system or ITS, and navigation. In general, this process produced many irrelevant references. “Snowball” techniques starting with known authors and papers and following up their references to other work tended to produce more fruitful results. At the end of the search, approximately 200 papers of primary utility were identified for review. The report provides an in-depth analysis of the concept of situation awareness. We conclude that there is considerable added value in applying the concept to the driving domain in terms of improved understanding of the relationship between driver performance and driver information processing. We provide a detailed review of all of the major methods and measures that have been used to assess situation awareness in other domains, and recommend an integrated, broad-based system of measurement for the driving domain. We argue that the concept of situation awareness has considerable utility for the development of more sensitive and valid methods and measures of cognitive processes that underlie driving performance. The broad review of the literature in the field of driving research provided very few examples of driving research that had directly incorporated the concept of situation awareness, whether in respect to models of driver performance, explanations of driver behaviour or in the context of evaluating the impact of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSs). A major exception is the recent theoretical and empirical work of Gugerty, who has pioneered the application of situation awareness to driver behaviour, and has developed new approaches to performance assessment using situation awareness measures and methods adapted from the aviation domain. Despite some technical concerns with this work, Gugerty has clearly demonstrated that situation awareness can be measured in a driving simulator. His analysis provides new insights into the way drivers process and interpret visual information. The report analyses selected literature on driving performance and ITSs, a field where there no current adoption of the concept of situation awareness. We demonstrate how the concept may be fruitfully used to show how ITSs might impact negatively or positively on the different levels of situation awareness, and how the concept may clarify existing contradictions and ambiguities in the literature. We recommend that the concept be applied to future research on new ITS concepts to measure and understand their impact on driver performance. Data from such studies can be expected to provide useful feedback about emerging design options. ITSs can potentially improve the driver’s overall situation awareness, in addition to enhancing specific aspects of the driving task. Applying the perspective of situation awareness to the concept of a Generic Driver Support System has the potential for ensuring that such systems are better able to meet the varying information processing needs of drivers. Emerging from this analysis we have developed a preliminary, goal-directed model of driving behaviour. This model, adapted from Endsley (1995b), integrates her conceptions of the three levels of situation awareness with prevailing driving theory in terms of strategic, tactical and operational aspects of driving in a framework that incorporates the major underlying human information processing mechanisms. We show how the model has testable predictions and how it may be used to frame new research questions of value in understanding driver performance. In conclusion, there is not, as yet, any direct empirical evidence to show that situation awareness affects driving performance. However, the concept (or a component of it) is implicated in many studies. Furthermore, by argument by analogy from studies on situation awareness in other domains, and in combination with re-interpretation of existing empirical findings in driving research, the extension of the concept to the driving domain holds promise. Nevertheless, we caution that the application of situation awareness to driving theory is unlikely to be the miracle missing ingredient that completes the recipe of understanding. The promise of situation awareness is that it has the potential to suggest new lines of theory, improved understanding, through associated research and new paradigms, and improvements to the designs of future ITSs. (Author/publisher)
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