Efficiency of alerts indicating a rear-end collision risk in distracted drivers

This paper presents a review of the literature to shed light on the impact of distractions on the effectiveness of warning indicating a risk of collision. The rear-end collisions account for a significant share of injury accidents. One of the major contributing factors to these collisions is drivers' inattention. To reduce the impact of this kind of collisions, driving assistance consisting in alerts have emerged. The effectiveness of these alerts has been evaluated in different situations (simulation, simulator and on road) in non-distracted and distracted drivers. In the latter case, the majority of distraction tasks used involves a diversion of eyes off the road to a device inside the vehicle, coupled or not with manual handling. However, few studies have also examined the impact of distractive tasks having only a cognitive component. The data show that the efficiency of an alert may depend on the interaction between its sensory modality and that of the distractive task. Finally, the effectiveness of these systems can also be affected by the interaction between its reliability and being or not distracted. This review raises research questions that should be further developed to ensure the safety of a larger number of users.