Evaluating the moderating effect of in-vehicle warning information on mental workload and collision avoidance performance

Purpose–The presentation of in-vehicle warnings information at risky driving scenarios is aimed to improve the collision avoidance ability of drivers.Existing studies have found that driver’s collision avoidance performance is affected by both warning information and driver’s workload.However,whether moderation and mediation effects exist among warning information,driver’s cognition,behavior and risky avoidance performance is unclear.Design/methodology/approach–This purpose of this study is to examine whether the warning information type modifies the relationship between the forward collision risk and collision avoidance behavior.A driving simulator experiment was conducted with waring and command information.Findings–Results of 30 participants indicated that command information improves collision avoidance behavior more than notification warning under the forward collision risky driving scenario.The primary reason for this is that collision avoidance behavior can be negatively affected by the forward collision risk.At the same time,command information can weaken this negative effect.Moreover,improved collision avoidance behavior can be achieved through increasing drivers’mental workload.Practical implications–The proposed model provides a comprehensive understanding of the factors influencing collision avoidance behavior,thus contributing to improved in-vehicle information system design.Originality/value–The significant moderation effects evoke the fact that information types and mental workloads are critical in improving drivers’collision avoidance ability.Through further calibration with larger sample size,the proposed structural model can be used to predict the effect of invehicle warnings in different risky driving scenarios.

Early Warning System of Important Meteorological Disasters in Hunan Province

Based on technologies of GRADS, Delphi, WEB and an SQLServer, distri- bution system for major meteorological disasters early warning information in Hunan Province was established. The system consists of warning tips, early warning for different media and early warning query statistics and the network terminal of the system platform includes a business database server, a message platform database server, a sending server and a receiving terminal. The system enjoys some func- tions, such as examination by different users, on-time updating and effectiveness of flood prevention, construction of excessive warning channel, construction of compre-hensive warning information platform and further improvement of information distribution. The system provides references for prevention and reduction of important me- teorological disasters in Hunan.