Presence and Quality of Navigational Landmarks: Effect on Driver Performance and Implications for Design

OBJECTIVE The objective of this study was to investigate the impact of landmark information of varying quality within drivers' navigation instructions on driving and navigation performance when navigating an unfamiliar route. BACKGROUND Current vehicle navigation systems predominantly use distance-to-turn information to enable a driver to locate a forthcoming maneuver. Although it has been proposed that the design of driver navigation aids can be improved through the incorporation of landmarks as key navigation cues, little research has investigated how the quality of the landmark affects driver behavior. METHOD An empirical field trial in a real traffic environment was undertaken with 48 participants in order to assess the effect of landmark quality on driver behavior when navigating an unfamiliar, complex, urban route. RESULTS The use of good landmarks (as opposed to poor landmarks or distance information) as key verbal navigation cues resulted in significant improvements in navigation performance, driving performance, and driver confidence immediately preceding a turn. The use of distance information to locate a turn resulted in significantly more glances to the in-vehicle display. CONCLUSIONS Good landmarks offer significant safety and performance benefits to a driver navigating an unfamiliar route. Poor landmarks can result in driver performance worse than that obtained using distance to turn to locate forthcoming maneuvers. APPLICATION The design of future vehicle navigation systems should not rely on distance-to turn information alone to enable a driver to locate forthcoming maneuvers but, rather, should incorporate good landmarks within the navigation instructions they present to drivers.