Projection helps to improve visual impact: On a dark or foggy day

Abstract

Driving is a highly visually demanding activity. Different driving conditions have different effects on drivers, so to understand the effects of driving vision on drivers, this paper directly investigates the role of central and peripheral vision in different scenarios and tests whether projection training improves driving behavior. We use a VR device to selectively present information in the central and peripheral parts of the field of view to achieve these goals. In Experiment 1, we compare drivers’ performance with and without experience when driving through four different visual conditions under dark and foggy skies. Participants’ visual search behavior and driving behavior activities were recorded simultaneously. Experiment 2 determined whether training with a circular projection of three colors improved the driver’s behavior. The results showed that (1) central vision is critical to the driver, and the importance of peripheral vision can be directly measured using the VR device; (2) a clear middle and blurred peripheral vision not only improves driver behavior in foggy weather but also helps to improve attention and driving ability; and (3) the color projection training indicated that the green projection was more effective than the others and that it significantly improved (4) Novice drivers collected visual information mainly from their central vision and were less able to drive than veterans, but green projection improved their driving ability and reduced collisions. Most importantly, the study results provide a new visual training paradigm that can improve driver behavior on dark and foggy days, especially for female novices.