A Mental Model Perspective of a Driver Workload System

Conceptualizing driver mental models is not a common tool used to evaluate vehicle human-machine interfaces (HMIs) in the transportation-related literature. The presented research examines the results of a mental model exercise used to explore drivers' perception of a task mitigation workload manager. The driver workload system was designed to disable HMI functions when driving demand was estimated (by the system algorithm) to be high based on real-time assessment of the external driving environment. This paper focuses on abstracting driver comprehension of the workload system using mental model concepts.