Presence and quality of navigational landmarks: effect on driver performance and implications for design

Current vehicle navigation systems still predominantly use distance-to-turn information to enable a driver to locate a forthcoming manoeuvre. It has been proposed that the design of driver navigation aids can be improved through the incorporation of landmarks as key navigation cues. However, little research has investigated how the quality of the landmark affects driver behaviour. An empirical field trial in a real traffic environment was undertaken with 48 participants (minimum age 21, mean 44; minimum driving experience three years; mean km driven in the last year 19,000) in order to assess the effect that the quality of a landmark had on driver behaviour when navigating an unfamiliar, complex, urban route. The use of good landmarks (as opposed to poor landmarks or distance information) as key verbal navigation cues resulted in significant improvements in navigation performance, driving performance, and driver confidence immediately preceding a turn. The use of distance information to locate a turn resulted in significantly more glances to the in-vehicle display. Actual or potential applications of this research include guiding the design of effective and safe future vehicle navigation systems.