Brake lamp detection in complex and dynamic environments: Recognizing limitations of visual attention and perception

Worldwide, both brake lamps and tail lamps on motor vehicles are required to be red. Previous studies have not examined the effect of this confound in a complex, high-traffic scenario in a driving simulator or on visuomotor behavior. In the first experiment, drivers detected brake lamps on nine lead vehicles and lane changes on two rear vehicles in a 15 min simulated night time highway drive. A second experiment was used to examine the findings in the context of pre-attentive visual processing research. A third experiment analyzed visuomotor behavior and subjective workload during a vigilance task to further evaluate this hypothesis. For all studies, tail lamp color was manipulated, resulting in two conditions: the currently mandated red tail lamps and red brake lamps vs. yellow tail lamps and red brake lamps. Compared to current rear lighting, employing yellow tail lamps with red brake lamps reduced RT, error, subjective workload, improved performance in detecting lane changes and also changed visuomotor behavior. It is suggested that the mechanism allowing better performance is pre-attentive, parallel visual processing.