Eye movement patterns in nighttime driving simulation : conventional and swivelling headlights

When driving at nighttime eye movements are constrained to the illuminated regions of the road surface to search for significant visual features (e.g. road markings). In daytime conditions, one of these features in particular, the tangent point to the inside of a curve, attracts gaze and has been proved to be used by drivers to control steering. An experiment was performed on the RENAULT headlight driving simulator. Eye movements were recorded at high frequency (500 Hz) in three conditions: a) driving with conventional headlights, b) driving with swivelling headlights, and c) driving at daytime (i.e. control condition). The results showed that when driving along a curve at night, 1) the majority of gaze fixations were found near the "tangent point", 2) gaze fixations ahead of the tangent point increased significantly with swivelling headlights. The difference observed for the swivelling as opposed to the conventional headlights supports evidence that a swivelling system favours anticipatory gaze behaviour. This not only improves the chance of an earlier visual detection for obstacle avoidance, but also leads to a more anticipative motor control for steering, both being pre-requirements to more secure driving conditions.