Age and experience in driving a vehicle and psychomotor skills in the context of automation

Past research shows that age and driving experience has a significant impact on on-road behavior. Both reaction time, as well as visual-motor coordination and speed of decision making, play an important role with regard to safety. Consequently, research in this area has been carried out for many years. However, there are still very few studies on the impact of these variables on the speed and way of taking control of an automated vehicle. The purpose of the study designed at the Motor Transport Institute was therefore, including but not limited to, verification of the hypothesis concerning the relevance of age and experience to psychomotor skills and its impact on adaptation to automation. The research involved tools for testing psychomotor skills (reaction time, eye-hand coordination) considered in driver psychological tests. The experimental part was carried out with a passenger car simulator, where the driver's behavior was verified under a specific on-road situation, including control takeover. As expected, the analyses proved that age and experience are important factors for both control takeover and way of reaction. Deficits and some elements related to inexperience were found in older and younger drivers, respectively, and those had a significant impact on the analyzed variables.