Exploring the Visual Attention Mechanism of Long-Distance Driving in an Underground Construction Cavern: Eye-Tracking and Simulated Driving
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
· On line 46, there is a missing period after “Figure 1”.
· On line 90, the authors should provide brief descriptions for the terms “average fixation time”, “saccade rate” and “saccade range”.
· On line 112, what is “the change law of drivers’ visual attention during long-distance driving”?
· On line 219, please provide the descriptions of the terms “the number of renewal cycles per event” and “a distraction level index”.
· In figure 3, should the phrase “Simulation test of virtual eye movement…” be “Simulation test of visual eye movement…”?
· In Figure 3, there are two photographs with embedded texts whose font size is too small. These texts are not readable.
· In Figure 3, “Intersubjective” should read “Inter-subject”.
· In Figure 5, the sentence “In three section the visual cues of these scenes with the asterisk are basically the same” is unclear. Should this be “In each of the three sections, the visual cues of the scenes within the same section are basically the same”? Please clarify.
· On line 280, in the phrase “14 in each group”, the authors do not explain the definition of “group”.
· In Table 1, the unit in years should be provided for the columns “Age” and “Driving Age”.
· On line 286, what is “PASS 15”?
· On lines 287-288, these are experimental results and should be moved to Section 4.
· Table 2 is not referred to in the text and not described in text.
· In Eq.(1), the functional form for EMD is not provided.
· In Eq.(2), there is a summation sign for all j=1 to l; however, the variables involved are not indexed by j. Please check.
· On line 336, “N” should read “n” in order to be consistent with Eq.(2).
· In Eq.(4), “f_mi” should read “f_mji”.
· On lines 360-361, “k is the index of the gaze behavior of the ith subject on the jth AOI in the mth scene”; however, k appears as the upper limit for the summation in Eq.(4). Should k be “no. of AOIs in the mth scene”?
· On line 371, “the fixation duration” should read “the average fixation duration”.
· On line 373, “N is the number of subjects” can be removed as this is already defined on line 336.
· On line 443, the results of AFTs are repeated. These are already reported on line 385.
· In Figure 11, there are signs with Chinese characters. These should be translated into English.
There are some grammatical errors that should be corrected.
Author Response
请参阅附件。
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Underground caverns are highly intricate structures. The underground construction environment poses an increased risk of driving accidents. Investigating the attentional preferences of drivers in underground caverns during construction would provide valuable insights to the field of research. The paper has a great potential of contributing to the existing theoretical body on transportation safety but there is a need to undertake some improvements of the article. The following should be considered by the authors to improve the paper:
1. Three topics are covered in this paper, including driver visual attention, long-distance driving, and underground construction cavern. Thus, the literature review should focus more on these areas as they form the essential elements of the topic. However, the literature related to long-distance driving is lacking in this paper, please add.
2. In lines 270-272, the article mentions the use of Tobii Pro Glasses 2 eye-tracking device for collecting eye movement data. The software employed for extracting the data need to be further specified. Therefore, it is recommended to add this information to ensure clarity and reproducibility of this study.
3. In lines 273-274, the author mentions that the accuracies of the eye-tracking device for the visual angle and head displacement were 0.5 degrees and 1 mm, respectively. What is the basis for setting the parameters?
4. In lines 280-282, for the participants, please add some critical demographic information such as career, and main types of vehicles driven. How to select the participants?
5. In Section 3, please add a paragraph to the text to supplement the method of eye movement data preprocessing. Firstly, the algorithm used for eye movement classification should be clarified. Secondly, it should be specified whether monocular or binocular averaged data was used to define the eye movement and eye beat behavior based on the collected eye movement data. Thirdly, the details of the filtering and noise reduction process should be provided, including the merging and filtering of gaze points. These additional details will provide a better understanding of the data preprocessing technique and ensure the accuracy of the subsequent analysis.
6. In lines 355-357 and lines 362-369, AFT, ACI, AFD and Pmj were selected as relevant visual indicators to analyze the visual characteristics of drivers in underground construction cavities. However, the basis for selecting AFD and Pmj as indicators is missing. There is therefore the need to state other publications that have adopted the rationale for adopting same indicators. Please add.
7. In conclusions (1) and (2), the recommendation is missing, this should be targeted at concerned stakeholders and how they will benefit from the study.
8. The next step can try to study the driver's EEG. Additionally, I suggest that the authors collect data on cars, such as speed, number of brake applications, etc.
Author Response
请参阅附件。
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
I hope the Attention concentration index (ACI) also mainly depends on the processing speed of the human. But that is not considered in this calculation. Can you explain why it is not needed for this index?
It will be good for the readers to understand if you place a picture of the scenes you are referring to in Tables 3, 4.
It should also include experience drivers who already have enough practice in this kind of road condition. It might be used in this work but details are not given.
It could be useful if you provide the simulator collection details of the drivers rather than showing only mean and SD.
It stated The method of utilizing a driver's response times to analyze the driver's ability to acquire driving information is indirect and less accurate. But still, this paper uses "time of response" as one of the factors for the Quantification method of eye movement indices.
According to the objective of the paper, the effects of long-distance driving in underground caverns are not given, unfortunately. If the table provides the details of impact based on the distance of the traveling, it will be good.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
