Car Drivers' Pattern of Eye Fixations on the Road and in the Laboratory

Abstract

Car drivers' eye fixations were registered while driving a car on the road or when in the viewing a slide which showed the same traffic situation. Even when the subjects of the second group were instructed to observe the slide presented as if they were driving there, they fixated their eyes on well-defined targets with quite different frequencies than those motorists who actually drove the car on the road. Furthermore, prolonged fixation times were observed in the laboratory as compared to the road-driving condition. The magnitude of the obtained differences was rather great. The results suggest that the subjects on the road fixated more task-oriented targets and also picked up more information per time unit than their counterparts in the laboratory. The results are discussed in relation to the experimental design.