Safe traffic participation requires continuous monitoring of the environment for potential safety hazards. Here we investigate, to what extent an interface using directed tactile stimuli to communicate temporal distances to approaching objects can make drivers feel supported and influence their driving safety. In contrast to previous studies, we focus on conditions in which the driver has relatively high levels of control over the criticality of evolving hazards as well as on scenarios with laterally approaching hazards. In a dynamic driving simulator experiment, 33 participants completed a selection of overtaking and intersection scenarios with and without sensory support. Furthermore, two novel variants of the interface which differed in the resolution of the temporal distance encoding were utilized. We measured safety, quantified as minimum time-to-contact (mTTC) and rate of critical situations, and assessed the participants’ subjective understanding, acceptance and perceived helpfulness of the support functions. Participants understood the system in both variants after brief exposure. The subjective evaluation was positive with regard to helpfulness, acceptance, and custom questionnaire responses. While mTTC values did not differ between supported and baseline drives, the availability of the system reduced the occurrence of safety–critical situations in intersection scenarios. Driving statistics further reveal that the availability of the system increased the likelihood for entering system-relevant signaling ranges in overtaking scenarios. In sum, the presented work extends previous findings by showing that the subjective utility of the investigated tactile interface applies beyond critical situations and that it can also provide a safety advantage at intersections.

安全的交通参与需要对环境进行持续监测，以发现潜在的安全隐患。在这里，我们调查了使用定向触觉刺激来传达与接近物体的时间距离的界面在多大程度上可以让驾驶员感到受到支持并影响他们的驾驶安全。与之前的研究相比，我们专注于驾驶员对不断变化的危险的严重程度具有相对较高控制水平的条件以及横向接近危险的场景。在动态驾驶模拟器实验中，33 名参与者完成了有或没有感官支持的超车和交叉路口场景的选择。此外，还利用了两种新的界面变体，它们在时间距离编码的分辨率上有所不同。我们测量了安全性，量化为最短接触时间 (mTTC) 和危急情况发生率，并评估参与者对支持功能的主观理解、接受度和感知有用性。参与者在短暂接触后了解了两种变体中的系统。主观评价在帮助性、接受度和自定义问卷回答方面是积极的。虽然支持的驱动器和基准驱动器之间的 mTTC 值没有差异，但系统的可用性减少了交叉路口场景中安全关键情况的发生。驾驶统计数据进一步显示，系统的可用性增加了在超车场景中进入系统相关信号范围的可能性。总共，