Study on Acceptability of and Distraction by Driving Support Agent in Actual Car Environment

Cars represent an important mode of transportation for the elderly; however, in recent years, the number of traffic accidents caused by elderly drivers in Japan has increased. Thus, to ensure driving safety, we are researching a driver agent system that provides driving support and feedback support to elderly drivers to encourage them to improve their driving. In this paper, we report on a set of preliminary experiments using our agent in an actual car environment designed to evaluate the subjective acceptability of and distraction by the agent based on subjective evaluation and analysis of driver fixation points during driving. The results revealed that the acceptability of the agent was high and that the agent in an actual car environment did not distract the driver.