The influence of alarm timing on driver response to collision warning systems following system failure

This driving simulator study focuses on false and missing alarms produced by a forward collision warning system and estimates the effect of alarm timing on driver response to alarm malfunction from the perspective of driver trust in alarms. The results show that drivers who experience late alarms are reluctant to respond to a false alarm and are not influenced by a missed alarm; however, drivers who experience early alarms tend to respond to a false alarm and suffer a delayed response to critical situations when a missing alarm happens. Furthermore, drivers whose judgement of trust is relatively high, tend to exhibit delayed braking, compared with drivers that have lower levels of trust. Driver behaviour towards false and missed alarms may vary according to alarm timing and its influence on trust in alarms; moreover, impaired system effectiveness caused by alarm malfunction may be mitigated by manipulating alarm timing.