Ubiquitous co-driver system and its effects on the situation awareness of the driver

The aim of this paper is to explore the effects of ubiquitous computing in cars on the situation awareness and expectations of the driver. In a driving simulation environment with participants using a co-driver system, we investigated how people took and recovered from misinformation provided by the system. The system presented safety-critical information about the upcoming curves on the road, but in the experiment part of the messages contained false information. The effects of this information on participants' behavior were investigated. On the grounds of the experiment, we discuss two approaches for investigating drivers' situational awareness, which are based on either mental workload or mental contents.