Researchers solved a 70-year-old traffic mystery in a finding that could lead to new safety systems in cars that could predict dangerous steering movements before they occur.
The newfound ability to predict what a driver is going to do in the future could help save countless lives in the future, Chalmers University of Technology reported.
"With the driver model I have developed, it is possible to predict what drivers are going to do with the steering wheel before they do it. It is possible to predict how far the driver is going to turn the wheel, right when the person starts a wheel-turning movement. It's like looking into the future," said Chalmers researcher Ola Benderius.
Back in 1947 researcher Arnold Tustin developed the first model that predicted how a person steers toward a target. He identified a "continuous and linear control behavior that corresponds with the car's driver 'gently and continuously'" following the road with the steering wheel. This was the prevailing theory on the phenomenon for some time, but data measurements showed some disparities.
To explain these disparities the researchers turned to something called the "behavioral theory of reaching," which looks at basic human behavior as they reach for an object. The theory suggests there is a direct relationship the speed of the movement and the distance of a person reaching from point A to point B; the longer the distance the quicker the movement.
"We immediately [recognized] this pattern from our measured steer signals," Benderius said. "It was a bit of a eureka moment. Was it possible that this basic human [behavior] also controlled how we steer a car?"
With this theory in mind the researchers looked at more than 1,000 hours of car and truck driving data that encompassed 1.3 million steer corrections, and found 95 percent corresponded with the reaching theory. This knowledge allowed them to develop a model that can explain many steering behaviors.
"This might completely change how we regard human control of vehicles, crafts and vessels," Benderius concluded. "I hope and believe that many researchers will [utilize] the findings and start to think in new ways. Control [behavior] has traditionally been studied on the basis of control theory and technical systems. If it is instead studied on the basis of neuroscience with focus on the human, an entire new world opens up. This could push the research field in an entirely different direction."
The findings were published in a recent edition of the Chalmers journal.
