Evaluating Driver Preferences for In-Vehicle Displays during Distracted Driving Using Driving Simulators

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper evaluates driver’s preferences for vehicle displays while driving. The study found that despite the emergence of new display devices in series production vehicles, traditional display methods will not be phased out. The authors evaluated both questionnaires and user experiences to understand driver behavior. By evaluating different driving scenarios, they highlight the importance of designing user-friendly displays that improve the driving experience.

Please find my suggestions below.

1. The introduction section would benefit from a more detailed explanation of the different levels of autonomous driving, along with examples of their applications in vehicles, such as active suspensions, emergency braking, and path tracking control. You can check https://doi.org/10.1109/TITS.2023.3321415, https://doi.org/10.1109/TVT.2023.3279460 as an example. Additionally, it would be helpful to discuss how vehicle displays handle these features. Moreover, some discussion besides screen displays should be included, since there are other ways to interact with the driver, such as sound or haptic devices. Furthermore, it would be interesting to discuss multimodal methods of providing information to the driver beyond screen displays, such as through sound or haptic devices. You can check https://doi.org/10.3390/s20123440 as an example.

2. Please provide gender and age data for the participants in Section 2.1. Please provide the questionnaire questions used to analyze the drivers' experience in Section 2.2. Please provide gender and age data for the participants in Section 2.3.

3. In line 270, the sentence “Researchers like Klauer assessed the applicability of various display methods through the analysis of drivers' reaction times. This study uses drivers' preferences and takeover times as key indicators for assessing display efficacy, as they directly measure how quickly and accurately users can process in-vehicle display information [18]” does not reference Professor Klauer's work, but Kumar, Surinder, and Tilak Raj.

4. Section 3 could benefit from some details on the simulation environment and the hardware and human-in-the-loop architecture.

5. Section 3.1.4 results are unclear. Please provide additional details on the tables and formulas.

6. The conclusion section should include simple numerical indicators that support the presented hypothesis. Additionally, it is important to discuss future work.Minor concerns

Minor concerns

1. Please check the abbreviations, since some definitions are repeated through the text, such as ADAS or AHP.

2. Figure quality is quite poor at some places. Please check Figures 2, 3, 5, 6, 9.

3. The manuscript would benefit from the inclusion of an abbreviations list.

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Author Response

Dear reviewer

Thank you very much for your comments and professional advice. These opinions help to improve the academic rigor of our article. Based on your suggestion and request, we have made corrected modifications on the revised manuscript.

Furthermore, we would like to show the details as follows:

1. The introduction section would benefit from a more detailed explanation of the different levels of autonomous driving, along with examples of their applications in vehicles, such as active suspensions, emergency braking, and path tracking control. You can check https://doi.org/10.1109/TITS.2023.3321415, as an example. Additionally, it would be helpful to discuss how vehicle displays handle these features. Moreover, some discussion besides screen displays should be included, since there are other ways to interact with the driver, such as sound or haptic devices. Furthermore, it would be interesting to discuss multimodal methods of providing information to the driver beyond screen displays, such as through sound or haptic devices. You can check https://doi.org/10.3390/s20123440 as an example.

The author's answer: In response to your reference to detailed explanations of the different levels of automated driving and examples of applications in vehicles such as emergency braking, tracking control, etc., we have carefully considered and agreed on the importance of these for the introductory section. We will refer to your recommended literature https://doi.org/10.1109/TITS.2023.3321415 for a more comprehensive description of examples of different scenarios where distracted driving control is used in modern vehicles . In addition, your discussion of how vehicle displays handle these functions, as well as other ways of interacting with the driver besides screen displays (e.g., audible or haptic devices) and suggestions for multimodal approaches to providing information to the driver through audible or haptic devices are also very pertinent. We will be adding this section to our revised article https://doi.org/10.3390/s20123440 to explore multiple ways of delivering information beyond traditional screen displays. 

2. Please provide gender and age data for the participants in Section 2.1. Please provide the questionnaire questions used to analyze the drivers' experience in Section 2.2. Please provide gender and age data for the participants in Section 2.3.

The author's answer: Lines 165-166 provide the gender and age numbers of the participants, and Lines 181 provide the gender of the participants. Lines 587-613 provide the driver experience questionnaire questions.

3. In Line 270, the sentence “Researchers like Klauer assessed the applicability of various display methods through the analysis of drivers' reaction times. This study uses drivers' preferences and takeover times as key indicators for assessing display efficacy, as they directly measure how quickly and accurately users can process in-vehicle display information [18]” does not reference Professor Klauer's work, but Kumar, Surinder, and Tilak Raj.

The author's answer: We sincerely thank the reviewer for careful reading. As suggested by the reviewer, we have corrected the " Klauer " into " Kumar et al ". （Line264）

4. Section 3 could benefit from some details on the simulation environment and the hardware and human-in-the-loop architecture.

The author's answer: I think it is essential to provide more details of the experimental equipment and human handling, so in (Line 313-315) the driving simulation equipment is shown using SILAB Version 6.0 produced by the Würzburger Institut für Verkehrswissenschaften and the participants are able to experience various scenarios that have been configured in advance and provide a near real driving experience. various scenarios in advance and provide a driving experience close to the real thing.

5. Section 3.1.4 results are unclear. Please provide additional details on the tables and formulas.

The author's answer: We think this is an excellent suggestion. We have adapted the structure and used a repeated-measures design to make the elaboration of the experimental procedure clearer and easier to understand, intending to allow each participant to experience five different on-board display designs (Line 365-389). The whole experimental process can be divided into five steps, and we used hierarchical analysis (AHP) to judge the importance level of the pairwise comparison matrix to form ten unique combinations of methods (after removing the repeated items). The sum formula is also explained to make it easier for readers to go through it. We hope that the above simplification and reorganization will give you a clearer and more logical understanding of the experimental design and process.

6. The conclusion section should include simple numerical indicators that support the presented hypothesis. Additionally, it is important to discuss future work.

The author's answer: Following the recommendations, we show the proposed numerical metrics and conclusions in the conclusions section (Line 534-551), where the overriding hypothesis is that the HUD provides a better experience, which is confirmed by the experimental findings. A discussion of the limitations of the current work to future work is also added (Line 560-570).

Minor concerns

1. Please check the abbreviations, since some definitions are repeated throughout the text, such as ADAS or AHP.

The author's answer: I think it is very important to check for abbreviations and avoid repeating them, so those that appear in the text, have been standardized. 

2. Figure quality is quite poor in some places. Please check Figures 2, 3, 5, 6, 9.

The author's answer: I've re-updated the quality of the images to ensure a good reading experience.

3. The manuscript would benefit from the inclusion of an abbreviations list.

The author's answer: A list of acronyms is shown in Line 615.

Thank you very much for your attention and time. Look forward to hearing from you. We value your input and are committed to making our research more rigorous and accessible. Thanks again for your valuable advice.

Yours sincerely

Liang Li

7 Apr.2024

Chiba University
Chiba, Japan

Reviewer 2 Report

According to the title of the paper, the authors evaluate driver preferences for different in-vehicle information displays during distracted driving. Looking at the profile of the "Electronics" journal,, I can say that the proposed article fits with that profile (subjects Electrical and Autonomous Vehicles, Electronic Multimedia). The article does not concern strictly technical issues but somewhat functional relations between man and machine (here: using various in-vehicle displays).

The authors present interesting research. Survey analyses and tests using a car driving simulator were used to try to indicate the types of HUD displays preferred by drivers. This provides interesting knowledge that is useful when assessing or selecting these types of information systems for drivers.

The structure of the article is clear and it does not raise any objections (disregarding the substantive comments indicated below).

I have the following reservations and comments (editorial and substantive):

·     Keywords – editing error: unnecessary numbering

·     Section 1 – editing error: no text justification.

·     Line 52 – “Schoettle posits that….” - the reference indication should appear immediately after its mention: “Schoettle [5] posits that….”  .

·     Line 54 – “National Highway Traffic Until Genuine” – NHTSA?.

·     Line 56 – “NETSA” – NHTSA?.

·     Line 92, 95, 98, 115, 123, 145 – the same as line 52: the reference indication should appear immediately after its mention: “Klauer et al. [9]….”, etc.

·     Line 123 “(2021”) – the year given here is unnecessary or inconsistent with the accepted method of making references.

·     Tab. 1 -  inconsistency in the photos shown: in the column labelled "ICE vehicle", there are illustrations of electric vehicles (e-tron).

·     Line 145 – Christina is the first name, should be : “Olaverri-Monreal et al. [7]….”.

·     Line 148 – “her” ?  [7] is a multi-authored work.

·     Section 2 and 3: The object as figure/table should appear after the first time they are mentioned in the text.

·     Tab. 2. – the values given in the table are not explained. What exactly does „Score of Understanding of Autonomous Driving (M)” mean?

·     Lines 270-277 – The context of this fragment is not very clear at this point. How does this directly relate to the description of the research method? This fragment is more suitable for a general overview of the issue.

·     Line 297 – “Hierarchical Analysis Method for Grouping Structure Relationship Model” – what is the reason for using capital letters?

·     Section 3. I'm a bit lacking information about the driving simulator itself (general information about its class, structure, car dynamics model, a reference where one could read such a description in more detail, etc.).

·     Line 376 – I don't understand the context of the reference [23]. What is the justification for this?

·     Line 382 – I don't understand the context of the reference [24]. What is the justification for this?

·     Line 395- 399 and Eq. (1) – unclear description. What is "Aw"?

·     Tab. 5. – what do the symbols shown in the "Summary" column mean?

·     Lines 451, 452 – punctuation errors.

·     Fig. 10 and corresponding text: How exactly is the driver's reaction time defined, and how was it measured? There is no description of the vertical axis on the chart. What do the values given in rectangles on the charts mean - the values given for the orange line "L3-L5..." do not match the values on the vertical axis?

·     Line 484 – “L3-L5 manual driving” ???

Author Response

Dear reviewer

Thank you very much for your comments and professional advice. These opinions help to improve the academic rigor of our article. Based on your suggestion and request, we have made corrected modifications to the revised manuscript. We hope that our work can be improved again.

Furthermore, we would like to show the details as follows:

1.Keywords – editing error: unnecessary numbering.  

The author's answer: I apologize for my carelessness and thank you for the reminder, as you mentioned we have removed some of the serial numbers and adjusted the formatting. （Line 25-26）

2. Section 1 – editing error: no text justification.

The author's answer: Section 1 has been aligned

3. Line 52 – “Schoettle posits that….” - the reference indication should appear immediately after its mention: “Schoettle [5] posits that….”  .

The author's answer: Adjusted citation format. (Line 51)

4. Line 54 – “National Highway Traffic Until Genuine” – NHTSA?.

The author's answer: Adjusted for "National Highway Traffic Until Genuine" abbreviated to NHTSA. (Line 54)

5.Line 56 – “NETSA” – NHTSA?

The author's answer: Fixed incorrect abbreviation for "NHTSA”. （Line 55）。

6. Line 92, 95, 98, 115, 123, 145 – the same as Line 52: the reference indication should appear immediately after its mention: “Klauer et al. [9] ….”, etc.

The author's answer: Adjusted formatting of references. ( Line 86, 91, 94, 96, 100, 115,123,144)

7. Line 123 “(2021”) – the year given here is unnecessary or inconsistent with the accepted method of making references.

The author's answer: Formatting adjusted and harmonized throughout. (Line 123)

8. Tab. 1 inconsistency in the photos shown: in the column labeled "ICE vehicle", there are illustrations of electric vehicles (e-tron).

The author's answer: I've checked the relevant vehicle details and re-updated them with the correct pictures. (Tab. 1)

9. Line 145 – Christina is the first name, should be: “Olaverri-Monreal et al. [7]….”.

The author's answer: Corrected author's name， “Christina” into “Olaverri-Monreal et al. [7] ….” （Line 144）

10. Line 148 – “her”?  [7] is a multi-authored work.

The author's answer: Corrected the correct team designation.（Line 147）

11. Sections 2 and 3: The object as a figure/table should appear after the first time they are mentioned in the text.

The author's answer: Already adjusted graphs/tables etc. to after the first mention in the text.（Sections 2 and 3）

12. Tab. 2. – the values given in the table are not explained. What exactly does „Score of Understanding of Autonomous Driving (M)” mean?

The author's answer: Thank you for your interest in the Understanding Autonomous Driving Score (M) in our study. This score was quantified through a questionnaire designed to assess participants' understanding of autonomous driving technology. To find out the participants' understanding of automated driving, there are 5 levels (No understanding, Little understanding, Some understanding, Highly knowledgeable, and Professional understanding) as shown below. As shown in Table A, Question 4 (Line 596), the user will self-assess. The scale ranges from 0-5, and (M) is the Mean score (Line200) of the ratings of the level of understanding of autopilot for all participants in the study.

13. Lines 270-277 – The context of this fragment is not very clear at this point. How does this directly relate to the description of the research method? This fragment is more suitable for a general overview of the issue.

The author's answer: Thank you for the suggestion that this paragraph is intended to summarize the context of the study and provide a direct theoretical justification for the choice of research methodology. We recognize that this link was not adequately articulated in the manuscript. Therefore, we are revising the response time to distracted driving to improve the clarity and relevance of the article. (Lines 262-273)

14. Line 297 – “Hierarchical Analysis Method for Grouping Structure Relationship Model” – what is the reason for using capital letters?

The author's answer: Thanks for the reminder that, on reflection, capitalization is not required in this position. I've made changes. (Lines 292)

15. Section 3. I'm a bit lacking information about the driving simulator itself (general information about its class, structure, car dynamics model, a reference where one could read such a description in more detail, etc.).

The author's answer: Thank you for your suggestion. This paragraph is intended to describe the experiment, so it is very important to add information about the driving simulator itself, so a description of the driving simulator is added. (Line313-316)

16. Line 376 – I don't understand the context of the reference [23]. What is the justification for this? Line 382 – I don't understand the context of the reference [24]. What is the justification for this?

The author's answer: Thanks for the suggestion. The purpose of adding citations is to refer to some data in the experimental process (such as maintaining 40km/h as urban road driving data, etc.) but considering that it has been mentioned before and there is no direct reference to the original literature, so Relevant literature will be removed here and the process will be made clearer. (Line 373,379)

17. Line 395- 399 and Eq. (1) – unclear description. What is "Aw"?

The author's answer: The author's answer: “Aw” represents the contribution of each programmer or criterion to the overall goal after considering the weights, which is a core calculation step in the hierarchical analysis method. For ease of understanding, “n” is the order of the matrix, and “A” is the judgment matrix. Calculating “Aw” is assessing the relative size of each programmer’s contribution to the overall objective. (Line 401)

18. Tab. 5. – what do the symbols shown in the "Summary" column mean?

The author's answer: Note: "Summary" refers to the summary or conclusions section of a statistical analysis. "****" denotes a very high level of significance in statistical analysis, typically indicating a p-value < 0.0001. "ns" indicates that the results are not statistically significant and have not reached the predetermined level of significance. （Line464-467）

19. Lines 451,452 – punctuation errors.

The author's answer: I apologize for my carelessness and thank you for the warning. Lines 438,439 have been corrected for the symbol error.

20. Fig. 10 and corresponding text: How exactly is the driver's reaction time defined, and how was it measured? There is no description of the vertical axis on the chart. What do the values given in rectangles on the charts mean - the values given for the orange Line "L3-L5..." do not match the values on the vertical axis.

The author's answer: As you suggest, driver reaction time is the time it takes from the perception of an emergency to the start of the execution of a response (e.g., braking or steering). Also for the reaction time measure, the participant is required to respond quickly by pressing the space bar to abort the distraction and regain control when confronted with a pre-determined distraction situation (Line 262-273). The vertical axis of the other graph and the corresponding values indicate the time of the subject's combined response, so a shorter reaction time means that the display system can warn the driver more quickly, effectively focusing their attention on driving. I apologize for my carelessness and we have recreated the chart with the corresponding values. (Line 487)

21. Line 484 – “L3-L5 manual driving”?

The author's answer: Thanks for the reminder, it helped me to find out the details of the error, where "L3-L5 manual driving" should be changed to "L3-L5 Autonomous driving”. (Line481)

Thank you very much for your attention and time. Look forward to hearing from you. We value your input and are committed to making our research more rigorous and accessible. Thanks again for your valuable advice.

Yours sincerely

Liang Li

7 Apr.2024

Chiba University
Chiba, Japan

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have addressed all my concerns. I congratulate them on their work.

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