Using In-vehicle Avatars to Prevent Road Violence

The physical difficulty of conveying appropriate social interactions between drivers expresses itself in aggression, selfish driving and anti-social behaviour. By building computers that convey/understand social cues/context, technologists can dramatically improve collective decision making. Existing research on Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) has not capitalised on recent advances in social computing. Eye gaze is a social cue affecting collective decision making which could contribute substantially to safe driving. This preliminary study proposes a new unobtrusive in-vehicle system to communicate drivers’ intentions and increase social awareness via eye gaze. There has been little research into the role of social cues to improve driving behaviour. The overall objective of this research programme is to improve drivers’ social awareness by breaking the “shielded space” with the use of an avatar with eye gaze movements. The avatar is designed to maximize a sense of social presence by reducing anonymity and increasing intimacy and immediacy. Participants were asked to drive through different types of intersections, in a driving simulator. An avatar representing the head of the other driver was displayed and driver behaviour was analysed. The result has shown significant difference in terms of eye gaze pattern when an avatar is displayed. No changes have been observed in terms of speed. This approach has the potential to improve social interactions between drivers, allow clearer collective decision making between road users and reduce the incidence of antisocial.