Information Bias in the Passenger Vehicle: Correcting to Aid the Vehicle Control Task

In this paper, the claim is that the information available in the passenger vehicle can be viewed as biased towards entertainment as opposed to vehicle handling. To support this claim, I discuss first a simplified description of driving behavior: street driving can be thought of as a highly complex task comprising two principal aspects: vehicle control (VC) and everything else (EE). I then propose ways to adjust the information bias of the vehicle in favor of VC and discuss concrete examples of work: vehicle control gauges, rear speed display and the ESX-2 Concept Car.

However, my view is that the information bias problem is not so much a "technology" problem as it is a "knowledge" problem. The vehicle control aspect of street driving appears inadequately respected and, consequently, inadequately articulated. Much more work in the area of understanding and articulating vehicle control expertise must be done before passenger vehicles can be fully enhanced in the ways suggested by this paper.