When a driver approaches an intersection where another vehicle is arriving, the optical motion of the other vehicle, as perceived by the moving driver, is the result of the visual effects of its objective motion and of the driver's self-motion. This paper describes an experiment to test the hypothesis that subjects rely on the vehicle's visual motion in relation to the reference point. Visual simulations were used to test the influence of the structure of the road environment on the visual anticipation of collisions made by drivers. The results confirm that subjects are able to analyse very fine variations in the motion of another vehicle during self-motion, but that environmental cues influence the subjects' visual abilities in complex ways. (A)
Samenvatting