Agency Information Collection Activities; Submission to the Office of Management and Budget for Review and Approval: Driver Interactions With Advanced Driver Assistance Technologies |
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Cem Hatipoglu
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
21 August 2020
[Federal Register Volume 85, Number 163 (Friday, August 21, 2020)]
[Notices]
[Pages 51844-51848]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2020-18409]
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DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
[Docket No. NHTSA-2019-0037]
Agency Information Collection Activities; Submission to the
Office of Management and Budget for Review and Approval: Driver
Interactions With Advanced Driver Assistance Technologies
AGENCY: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA),
Department of Transportation.
ACTION: Notice and request for comments on a request for approval of a
new information collection.
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SUMMARY: In compliance with the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, this
notice announces that the Information Collection Request (ICR)
abstracted below has been forwarded to the Office of Management and
Budget (OMB) for review and approval. A Federal Register notice with a
60-day comment period soliciting comments on the following information
collection was published on May 21, 2019 (84 FR 23154). NHTSA received
7 public comments. A summary of the comments and the changes NHTSA made
in response to those comments is provided below.
DATES: Written comments should be submitted on or before September 21,
2020.
ADDRESSES: Written comments and recommendations for the proposed
information collection, including suggestions for reducing burden,
should be submitted to the Office of Management and Budget at
www.reginfo.gov/public/do/PRAMain. To find this particular information
collection, select ``Currently under 30-day Review--Open for Public
Comment'' or use the search function.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: For additional information or access
to background documents, contact Elizabeth Mazzae, Applied Crash
Avoidance Research Division, Vehicle Research and Test Center, NHTSA,
10820 State Route 347--Bldg. 60, East Liberty, Ohio 43319; Telephone
(937) 666-4511; Facsimile: (937) 666-3590; email address:
elizabeth.mazzae@dot.gov.
[[Page 51845]]
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Before a Federal agency can collect certain
information from the public, it must receive approval from the Office
of Management and Budget (OMB). In compliance with these requirements,
this notice announces that the following information collection request
has been forwarded to OMB.
OMB Control Number: To be issued at time of approval.
Title: Driver Interactions With Advanced Driver Assistance
Technologies.
Form Numbers: NHTSA forms 1522, 1525, 1527.
Type of Request: New information collection.
Type of Review Requested: Regular.
Length of Approval Requested: Three years from the date of
approval.
Abstract: NHTSA has proposed to perform research involving the
collection of information from the public as part of a multi-year
effort to learn about drivers' use of and behavior in interacting with
certain advanced driver assistance technologies (ADAS). The research
will involve on-road, semi-naturalistic driving experimentation in
which participants who are members of the general public will drive
government-owned instrumented production vehicles equipped with driver
assistance technologies. The goal is to measure drivers' responses to
system alerts and their frequency of system use, as well as observe
their behavior during system use. This research will support NHTSA
decisions relating to safe implementation of advanced driver assistance
technologies.
The research will also investigate whether drivers' experience with
one brand's ADAS impacts how they interact when driving another vehicle
equipped with a different brand's systems. This scenario is one that
would be experienced with rental cars and family vehicle sharing and
will provide important insights into how differences in system
operation and interface design aspects may cause usability issues. The
observation of usability issues would inform NHTSA about the benefits
of common system interface design aspects (e.g., visual and auditory
displays and controls).
Participants will include drivers with and without experience with
the particular ADAS features being studied. Experienced drivers will be
ones who own one of the two vehicle models equipped with the particular
ADAS feature(s) being studied and can be verified to have a certain
degree of experience in using the feature(s). Participants will be
asked to drive a specified route over public roadways while using
driver assistance technologies. Participants' actions to engage the
assistance features and responses to unrequested disengagements will be
observed and recorded.
Information will be collected during the course of the research
through participant screening questions, recording of video and
engineering data, and post-drive questionnaires. Questions addressed to
individuals will serve to assess individuals' suitability for study
participation, to obtain feedback regarding participants' use of the
ADAS technologies, and to gauge individuals' level of comfort with and
confidence in the technologies' performance and safety. Since
qualitative feedback or self-report data is not sufficiently robust for
the purpose of investigating driver performance/interaction issues with
advanced vehicle control and safety technologies, objective data will
also be recorded including driver eye glance behavior and hand
locations. Eye glance behavior will reveal how drivers visually monitor
and respond to visual alert information. Hand location data will
provide information regarding how well drivers are able to engage the
advanced driver assistance functions efficiently (e.g., with one
attempt or multiple attempts) and how long it takes. We will observe
whether drivers engage in secondary tasks (e.g., interacting with
infotainment functions) during feature engagement.
Description of the Need for the Information and Proposed Use of the
Information:
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's (NHTSA)
mission is to save lives, prevent injuries, and reduce healthcare and
other economic costs associated with motor vehicle crashes. As driver
assistance technologies advance, they have the potential to
dramatically reduce the number of motor vehicle crashes, injuries, and
associated economic costs. The safety and effectiveness of the
technologies depends on drivers understanding the capabilities,
constraints, and visual and auditory alerts provided. Drivers'
understanding of when assistance features are available to use and when
they are not is important for safety. In particular, drivers must
understand and respond quickly when a feature indicates that it is
disengaging and the driver must retake full manual control of driving.
This work seeks to gather information regarding how drivers who are
inexperienced compare to drivers with experience using driver
assistance features including advanced cruise control and either lane
keeping assistance or lane centering assistance. The research will
compare the two groups' use of these features in interactions, response
to disengagement notifications, and proper use.
The collection of information will consist of: (1) Question Set 1,
Driving Research Study Interest Response Form, (2) Question Set 2,
Screening Questions, (3) passive observation of driving behavior, and
(4) Question Set 3, Post-Drive Questionnaire.
Affected Public (Respondents): Research participants will be
licensed drivers aged 25 years to 65 who drive at least an average
number of miles annually (e.g., 11,000 miles), are in good health, and
do not require assistive devices to safely operate a vehicle and drive
continuously for a period of 3 hours.
Estimated Number of Respondents: The data collection will have two
equal-sized parts: One that will begin immediately upon receipt of PRA
clearance and will involve use of two 2018-2019 model year U.S.
production vehicle models. The second part of the data collection will
begin after completion of the first part and will have the same
approach, but will involve different vehicle models.
Information for both parts of the data collection will be collected
in an incremental fashion to permit the determination of which
individuals have the necessary characteristics for study participation.
All interested candidates will complete Question Set 1, Driving
Research Study Interest Response Form. A subset of individuals meeting
the criteria for Question Set 1 will be asked to complete Question Set
2, Screening Questions. From the individuals found to meet the criteria
for both Questions sets 1 and 2, a subset will be chosen with the goal
of achieving a sample providing a balance of age and sex to be
scheduled for study participation.
A summary of the estimated numbers of individuals that will
complete the noted question sets across both the first and second data
collection parts is provided in the following table. Both data
collection parts will involve approximately 500 respondents for
Question Set 1, 300 for Question Set 2, and 150 for Question Set 3.
[[Page 51846]]
Estimated Number of Respondents
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Questions Total N
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Question Set 1, Driving Research Study Interest Response 1000
Form...................................................
Question Set 2, Screening Questions..................... 600
Question Set 3, Post-Drive Questionnaire................ 300
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Estimated Time per Response: For both parts of the data collection,
completion of Question Set 1, Driving Research Study Interest Response
Form is estimated to take approximately 5 minutes and completion is
estimated to take approximately 7 minutes for Question Set 2, Screening
Questions. Completion of Question Set 3, Post-Drive Questionnaire is
estimated to take 15 minutes per inexperienced participant and 20
minutes per experienced participant for both parts of data collection.
The estimated annual time and cost burdens across both the first
and second data collection parts are summarized in the table below. For
example, the anticipated number of individuals completing Question Set
1 for part 1 of the data collection is half of 1000, or 500, and so on.
The number of respondents and time to complete each question set
are estimated as shown in the table. The time per question set is
calculated by multiplying the number of respondents by the time per
respondent and then converting from minutes to hours. The hour value
for each question set is multiplied by the latest average hour earning
estimate from the Bureau of Labor Statistics \1\ to obtain an estimated
burden cost per question set.
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\1\ * Cost per hour based on Bureau of Labor Statistics Dec.
2019 Average Hourly Earnings data for ``Total Private,'' $28.32
(Accessed Jan. 28, 2020 at https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t19.htm).
Estimated Time per Response and Total Time
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Time per
Question set Question topic Participants response Pay rate * Total burden Total cost
(minutes) hours
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1.................................... Driving Research Study Interest 1000 5 $28.32 83.3 $ 2,359.91
Response Form.
2.................................... Screening Questions.............. 600 7 28.32 70.0 1,982.40
3.................................... Post-Drive Questionnaire, 150 15 28.32 37.5 1,062.00
Inexperienced.
Post-Drive Questionnaire, 150 20 28.32 50.0 1,416.00
Experienced.
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Total Estimated Burden.............................................. .............. .............. .............. 240.8 6,820.31
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Frequency of Collection: The data collections described will be
performed once to obtain the target number of 300 valid test
participants.
On May 21, 2019, NHTSA published a 60-day notice requesting public
comment on the proposed collection of information.\2\ We received
comments from seven entities, including four organizations and three
individuals. Organizations submitting comments included AAA, The Center
for Auto Safety, Consumer Reports, and the Motor & Equipment
Manufacturers Association (MEMA). All comments were supportive of the
research. No comments addressed the questions to be asked of
participants. Some suggestions for clarifying and expanding the
research are summarized below.
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\2\ 84 FR 23154 (May 21, 2019).
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Some comments requested clarification of participation criteria,
such as a more detailed definition of what NHTSA would consider
``experience'' with using an ADAS. For example, AAA recommended that in
relation to study participant recruitment, NHTSA should collect more
information on candidate participants' personally-owned vehicle(s), any
ADAS features on their vehicle(s), and the individuals' experience with
respect to ADAS technologies. NHTSA wishes to clarify that the
participant recruitment criteria listed in the prior published 60-day
PRA information collection notice was not a complete accounting of all
information that will be considered in screening candidate
participants. The notice was an announcement of a planned information
collection for the purposes of obtaining PRA clearance and not a full,
detailed accounting and substantiation of a research plan. NHTSA has a
strategy for characterizing drivers' experience with the specific
vehicle models and ADAS technologies planned for involvement in the
study. For example, NHTSA will query state vehicle registration data
for a particular VIN pattern to identify owners of vehicle models
equipped with the technology of interest. In addition, vehicle
registration data will provide information regarding how long an
individual has owned the vehicle. A minimum annual driving mileage
requirement will be used and participants will be required to be a
primary driver of the vehicle model of interest. Owners will also be
questioned about their use of the technology and also be observed using
the technology during the experimental training step to allow us to
confirm that the individual has an acceptable degree of system-use
knowledge desired for the study.
Some comments suggested adjustments to study participation
criteria, such as lowering the minimum annual mileage driven and
including younger and older drivers.
1. A suggestion to lower the minimum annual driving mileage
criterion of 14,000 miles was submitted by both AAA and The Center for
Auto Safety. AAA commented that the stated mileage criterion
corresponded to drivers ``who are in the top quartile of all drivers
nationwide with respect to annual driving mileage . . .''. The study's
annual mileage criterion is based on a desire to obtain participants
who drive regularly. NHTSA agrees that annual driving miles statistics
show a declining trend. In response to these comments
[[Page 51847]]
and further review of available data, the minimum annual driving
mileage criterion will be lowered to 11,000 miles.
2. The Center for Auto Safety commented that the stated participant
age range of 25-54 years does not account for the other 49 percent of
the driver population who are under 25 years of age or over 54 and that
``. . . one of the fastest growing cohorts in the United States are
people aged 65 and older.'' For this research, due to limited time and
funding with which to conduct the research, NHTSA chose a single age
group consisting of the ``middle age'' range of drivers, those aged 25
to 65, that is considered to have generally homogeneous driving
behavior characteristics. NHTSA will consider including younger and
older drivers in subsequent research efforts.
Other comments suggested broadening the study scope to include
additional vehicle models and a variety of traffic scenarios and
conditions.
1. Regarding the route over public roads that participants will
drive in the research, AAA stated that the ``course should entail a
variety of road conditions including divided limited access highways,
two lane rural roads and surface streets, as appropriate. Varying
traffic conditions should be included as well.'' Route selection for
the first part of this research is constrained by the operational
design domain (ODD) of technologies and vehicle models chosen for the
study. As such, the route to be used in the first part of this work
will necessarily consist of multi-lane highways. For the second part of
this research, NHTSA will consider available production ADASs and their
ODDs when selecting the route to be used for testing.
2. Both AAA and MEMA recommended that the study route should permit
participants to use the technologies in different types of traffic
conditions and traffic volumes. NHTSA will not control for traffic
volumes directly in this research, but will constrain testing hours to
daylight periods and will record video data documenting traffic
conditions experienced by participants during their experimental drives
for later characterization as part of data analysis.
3. Consumer Reports expressed concern that only two vehicle models
are planned for use in the first part of this research. They noted that
the ``capabilities and limitations of these systems can vary greatly
among manufacturers, and thus it would be very difficult to generalize
the results to all vehicles if NHTSA's research includes only two
vehicle models.'' While testing additional models would likely provide
additional interesting information, it is not feasible to test a large
number of vehicle models using the planned research method and ensure
timely and relevant results. In choosing vehicle models, we considered
feature availability, feature performance (e.g., can lateral and
longitudinal control be engaged simultaneously?), and sales. The two
vehicles' chosen have different strategies for determining when lateral
and longitudinal control may be engaged: One is speed based and the
other is map/location based. One of the two vehicle models is also a
fairly frequently purchased model for which the ADAS technologies of
interest are standard equipment.
For the second, subsequent part of this research, NHTSA will
consider available production ADAS-equipped vehicles and their ODDs and
choose ones that will best help us answer important safety questions.
4. A comment from AAA stated that ``NHTSA should ensure that the
methodology used for comparing vehicles accounts for the system
variations, while tabulating the number and reason for disengagements
of the system.'' NHTSA wishes to clarify that the focus of this
research is not on comparing systems from different manufacturers, but
rather to examine how effectively drivers use and interact with ADAS
technologies involved in the research. The research will also examine
the efficacy of the systems' different means of communication with the
driver in relation to status of the ADAS feature(s). NHTSA has other
ongoing research efforts that focus on characterizing technology
performance separate from the driver behavior and technology use
context.
5. MEMA recommended increasing the survey accuracy by increasing
sample size. The total number of participants planned for this on-road,
semi-naturalistic driving research is 300. For on-road, instrumented
vehicle research, this number represents quite a large number of
research participants and would require substantial funding and labor
effort to complete the work. NHTSA's preliminary calculations show that
the planned sample size will provide ample statistical power for the
study analyses planned.
6. AAA suggested that ``Before moving forward with experimental
design, NHTSA should provide the public and industry an opportunity to
conduct a design review.'' This step could be critical in ensuring that
automakers who design and deploy advanced driver assistance
technologies can provide appropriate feedback and highlight important
information to NHTSA to optimize research results.'' NHTSA generally
welcomes exchanges of information with industry partners. In this
instance, however, the approach and experimental design for the first
part of this research is complete, as the study's magnitude in terms of
number of participants and time required for participation (i.e., time
burden) must be estimated in order to request clearance under the
Paperwork Reduction Act. NHTSA has taken pains to ensure that the
systems involved in the research will be production ADAS-equipped
vehicles that are currently available for sale to the American public.
Also, the vehicles will necessarily be driven on roadways that maximize
the opportunity for use of the ADS features being examined given the
ODD of those features. Therefore, we are confident that the study
results will provide useful information to automakers.
Three additional comments from individual members of the public
highlighted concerns regarding driving automation. One commenter
concerned about the possibility of vehicles being hacked and remotely
controlled asserted that in all vehicles with driving automation
capability, ``there needs to be the standard automotive equipment and a
manual override switch in place'' so that ``in case something happens
it can be changed back to `normal' vehicle functions instantly.''
Another individual suggested that ``in addition to instrumented
vehicles for data collection, the latest in virtual reality technology
be leveraged for such efforts.'' Lastly, a commenter stated his belief
that automation in vehicles needs to be ``all or nothing because as
drivers get acclimated to automation they will lose their proficiency
at driving a vehicle. In my opinion all vehicles . . . will have to
operate on the same system, with no human responsibilities . . .''.
NHTSA appreciates the suggestions regarding participation criteria
and additional experimental conditions to consider; however, the scope
of the current work is limited by both program timeline and allocated
funding amount. NHTSA will keep in mind the suggestions as input for
future research programs.
Public Comments Invited
You are asked to comment on any aspect of this information
collection, including (a) whether the proposed collection of
information is necessary for the Department's performance; (b) the
accuracy of the estimated burden; (c) ways for the department to
enhance the quality, utility and clarity of the information collection;
and (d) ways
[[Page 51848]]
that the burden could be minimized without reducing the quality of the
collected information.
Authority: The Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995; 44 U.S.C.
chapter 35, as amended; 49 CFR 1.49; and DOT Order 1351.29.
Issued in Washington, DC.
Cem Hatipoglu,
Associate Administrator, Office of Vehicle Safety Research.
[FR Doc. 2020-18409 Filed 8-20-20; 8:45 am]
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