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Autonomy and individual mobility of elders become a societal issue for many countries. However, driving is a complex and demanding activity, liable to generate potential risk for elder drivers whose perceptive, cognitive or motor capabilities have diminished with aging. In order to both maintain older driver's mobility and road safety for all, driving assistances offers a potential solution, providing a support for this group of drivers. In order to develop such systems, it is needed to observe and to analyze actual driving behaviours of older drivers in ecological driving conditions (using an instrumented vehicle on open roads within the traffic). This in depth investigation aims at identifying specific difficulties encountered by elders while driving in order to ergonomically specify and then to design future Elderly-Adapted Driving Assistance Systems (E-ADAS) based on monitoring functions technology for context-adaptive assistance. This paper introduces the Human Centered Design approach we implemented in this research and presents a first set of preliminary results in terms of in depth analysis of older drivers' activity which constitutes the first step towards the future ergonomic design of E-ADAS.; L'autonomie et la mobilité individuelle des personnes âgées représentent un enjeu sociétal important pour de nombreux pays. Or conduire est une activité complexe qui peut représenter un risque potentiel pour les conducteurs âgés, dont les capacités perceptives, cognitives ou motrices ont décliné. Pour maintenir la mobilité des ainés tout en favorisant une sécurité routière pour tous, les systèmes d'assistance constituent une réponse potentielle au soutien de la conduite des conducteurs âgés. Pour concevoir de tels systèmes, il est nécessaire d'observer et d'analyser l'activité de conduite des âgés en situation naturelle (au volant d'un véhicule instrumenté évoluant dans la circulation, sur route ouverte). Cette investigation vise à identifier des difficultés rencontrées sur la route par ces conducteurs, afin de spécifier ergonomiquement puis de concevoir des systèmes d'assistance adaptés aux besoins réels de cette population, en s'appuyant notamment sur des fonctions de « monitorage » permettant d'apporter une aide adaptée au contexte de conduite. Cet article introduit cette méthode de « Conception Centrée sur l'Humain » mise en place dans le cadre de cette recherche, et illustre notre démarche (aux moyens d'exemples concrets) d'analyse fine de l'activité de conduite des conducteurs âgés, à des futures fins de conception ergonomique de systèmes d'aide à la conduite adaptés aux besoins spécifiques des séniors.

Recent research has clearly shown that inattention when driving has an indisputable impact on road safety. 'Mind wandering' (MW), an inattentional state caused by a shift in attention from the ongoing task to inner thoughts, is not only frequent in everyday activities but also known to impact performance. There is a growing body of research investigating the concept of MW, suggesting potential causes that could foster such a phenomenon. Only one epidemiological study has focused on this issue in a critical driving context (Galéra et al., 2012), and it revealed the harmful effects of MW in increasing the risk of a car crash. Experimental studies rather consider that driver would adduce in MW (Lemercier et al., 2014). When the driving context is too hard or the thought too difficult to proceed, driver reduced their MW. The aim of this paper is to examine this issue using the most recent trip of ordinary drivers whose MW state did not lead to a road accident. Using a questionnaire, information was collected about the participants' most recent trip as a driver, including: (1) personal characteristics, (2) context in which MW occurs, (3) awareness of MW episodes and finally (4) characteristics of the thoughts. Results: revealed that MW affected 85.2% of the drivers, who spent on average 34.74% of their trip in a MW state. Moreover, we found that the contexts which favor MW are situations in which less of the driver's attention is needed to drive, such as familiar commutes, monotonous motorways or by-passes, or when drivers were alone in their cars. In these MW situations, the drivers quickly became aware of their MW episodes. Thoughts tend to involve neutral private concerns, related to present- or future-oriented content. Our findings suggest that MW is a functional state aiming to solve current problems. Future investigations should focus on this critical concept of MW when driving, both to identify safety issues and to provide suitable solutions for drivers subject to a wandering mind.

International audience; Autonomy and individual mobility of elders becomes a societal issue for many countries. Thus, driving is a complex and demanding task, liable to generate specific driving errors and difficulties for a safe driving, even more for elders. In order to both maintain older drivers mobility and to avoid such road safety risks, a solution concerns driving assistances development, providing a technological support for this group of drivers. In this frame, it is needed to observe and to analyse actual driving behaviours and specific difficulties of older drivers in ecological driving conditions, using an instrumented vehicle on open roads. The aim is then to ergonomically specify and design future Senior-Adapted Driving Assistance Systems (S-ADAS) based on monitoring functions embedding driver's activity model within the technology for adaptive Human Machine Cooperation. This paper introduces the Human Centered Design approach we implemented and presents preliminary results in terms of in depth analysis of older drivers' activity which constitutes the first step towards S-ADAS.

Commonly defined as “task-unrelated thoughts”, the mind wandering (MW) state is one of the causes of inattention to on-going tasks. Such a concept includes various kinds of thoughts from unaware ones to emotional/ruminative or distractive ones (i.e. all thoughts unrelated to an emotional state). Some researchers have investigated emotional ruminative thoughts in the daily driving context and found an indisputable impact on the focus of attention on the driving scene. Although more frequent in driving situations, no study has focused on distractive thoughts. The aim of this paper is to determine how this kind of task-unrelated thought impacts driving behavior. To induce distractive thoughts, participants were instructed to encode picture/word (retrospective thoughts) and picture/intention (prospective thoughts) pairs during a distractive thought induction phase. Then, in the simulated driving phase, encoded pictures were presented on highway road signs, and served as cues of recall. Drivers had to recall either the word or the intention associated with the picture as soon as they saw it, requiring self-activation of thoughts by participants. Distractive thoughts led to less micro-regulation of both speed and lateral position and narrowed visual scanning of the driving scene. Participants also declared that it increased their mental workload. Theoretical and methodological aspects of the study were discussed regarding the literature on mind-wandering and distraction in driving.