Switching Back to Manual Driving: How Does it Compare to Simply Driving Away After Parking?

Abstract

Is there a difference in behavior when drivers start driving after parking compared to taking over from an autonomous driving car? In the former, the driving context switch (from static to driving) might be bigger than the latter, where drivers are already in a moving vehicle. This bigger difference might be paired with a decision to stop attending to any distracting task since drivers might find themselves in a different state after driving away. Participants drove a straight highway in a simulator. They either took over driving after being driven autonomously, or after being parked. Concurrently, we played distracting videos in the simulator. Participants looked more towards the road while the car was driving autonomously but there was no difference in driving performance and gazes towards the distraction after take-over compared to starting after parking. This implies that despite a difference in attention before takeover, the control switch is similar.