Safer Trip Computers by Human Factor Designs

The need for more economic driving and the new possibilities of electronic equipment in cars lead to additional display and control devices for the driver. Such systems contain potential safety risks, if they are not designed with special emphasis on ergo-nomic requirements. Several keyboard con­cepts for an information center (trip compu­ter) were compared experimentally. By mea­suring operating time, eye fixation time to keyboard and display etc. it was discovered, that a so called sequence keyboard with one key corresponding to each display digit or column has several advantages compared with a 10-key telephone keyboard. Especially the fixation time to each keyboard as a measure of the potential safety risk differed by 0.5 to 1.0 second. The longer operating time for the sequence keyboard compared with the telephone keyboard does not impair traffic safety because the sequence keyboard mostly was actuated without fixation and in accordance with the traffic situation the input sequence was interrupted.