The limits of path error-neglecting in straight lane driving

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Abstract
It is argued that driving cannot simply be considered as a permanent, closed-loop task. Time-to-line-crossing (TLC) is used as a measure to quantify the potential role of visual open-loop and path-error-neglecting strategies. Basically, TLC represents the time available for a driver to neglect path errors until the moment at which any part of the vehicle reaches one of the lane boundaries. The strategy adopted by drivers during error-neglecting should be represented in terms of decision rules, describing how drivers switch from error-neglecting to error-correcting when approaching the edge of a lane. The experiment to be presented in this paper was designed to provide these rules for a straight lane-keeping task. Drivers were instructed to neglect the vehicle path error and to switch to error-correcting only at that moment when the vehicle heading could still comfortably be corrected to prevent a crossing of the lane boundary. The results show that the lateral distance from the lane boundary at which drivers switch to error-correction increases about linearly with the lateral approach speed. This mechanism results in an approximately constant TLC (time) distance at the moment of decision: this result being consistent over a broad range of speeds.

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