Climbing into the Cockpit

Anything that reduces head-down time helps with situational awareness. It doesn't matter if that is a military fighter jet or your daily driver.

However, you just know that any new technology in a car will be overdone for the sake of trying to capture buyers. Just like the old VCR remotes they will be overloaded with features that may help sell the car, but never get used - or if they do, may prove to be more of a distraction than a help.

Aircraft and avionics designers go through many hoops to get the "human factors" right in an aircraft. Even the colors, position, and symbology are carefully chosen for compliance to a strict set of rules.

As more and more features are added to automobiles it would be wise to take some lessons from the aviation industry and create a standard for their "human factors".

The reason is that we keep driving up the complexity of these machines and as more critical factors are added to the mix a more disciplined approach would help reduce driver overload and confusion just as they do in the cockpit of aircraft.

No doubt their will be some resistance from marketing and even designers who are in love with the feature sets more than the practicality and problem solving they are supposed to represent.

Yep, mizzling rain, poor light, lots of tail lights and neon, small child behind yet another set of reflections - perfect.

First let me say I have zero experience in a cockpit but I do recall an interesting TV show I watched. It concerned a US pilot in Viet Nam who was shot down. Luckily he was able to bail and was picked up by a chopper and retirned to his aircraft carrier. He was fuming when he got back, screaming to the support guys about lack of warning that he was being tailed, he ranted on the the radar guys for a while until they calmed him down and ran the tapes. With the confusion of comabt flying gone you can clearly hear on the tapes three warnings from ground or ship based radar and you can hear the warning signal from his own plane that the enemy had "locked on" to him. Then they went through a list of all the people who were talking to him, all the systems he was expected to be monitoring and it was a striking example of information overload.

Now back to your everyday car. We have already passed the information overload threshhold for most drivers I think and adding anything else will be a disaster. I have tangled with AH before about driving and reading his various posts on the topic I see he is an exceptional driver who takes the job very seriously. For a driver like that a HUD would be very useful, for your average soccer mom with a minivan full of 10 year olds it will be more trouble than it is worth.

Give todays drivers the same training required for a fighter pilot and we might have a solution. Until then we have already given drivers too many distractions.

Personally I would like to see something for the bad weather or road conditions. Living in the snowy north in a rural unlit area I could use that. But driving in a city? Anything more on my winsheild could too easily lead to a dead pedestrian.

Just my non-expert 2 cents.

Actually, I do not agree that most vehicle will feature such windshields. They are useful for pilots, but are too much distraction for drivers who already have a visual field clogged with information (cars all around, street signs and stoplights, bicyclists, pedestrians...) that already places heavy demands on his visual system. Perhaps a vehicle warning system that can be activated in conditions of heavy fog might be useful -- but I'd want an off switch to be available; otherwise I'd just have to find a way to block it anyway.

This will never work!!!!

There's a big difference between an automobile and an aircraft...................mainly that an aircraft is surrounded by nothing in the way of obstacles that can be crashed into. Not to mention, that pilots are highly trained to make use of on screen technology without forgetting that they're flying a plane.

I'd suggest they do some real life tests before they start incorporating them.

While a driver is focused on the windshield display, everything in front of him/her will be relegated to peripheral vision..........................I don't see that working out very well.

Lets think about the average distracted driver for a minute, and remember who it is that will be using these displays...........................they're not pilots.

Not to mention....................I could totally see an app on the horizon for mobile devices, so that emails, etc. could be veiwed on the windshield.

They would be better off working on ways to take the driver completely out of the equation.

I am going to differ with you here.

While there are differences in scenarios between aircraft and cars, there are more similarities that require a heightened sense of situational awareness.

The object with any safety oriented technology is to improve the risk factors involved.

While manufactures of automobiles do extensive customer testing in their designs, they have not adopted a universal "human factors" standard for their designs like that of the aviation industry.

It appears that the industry is moving in that direction, but my whole point is that as more and more technology creeps into the vehicle the need for a solid and consistent human factor interface is more and more critical.

I will agree that any HUD should be free of distracting information, which I hinted at in my post. Again, this is where aviation human factors really shines. Clutter is a well understood problem and one that is taken quite seriously for aircraft. That same problem needs to be addressed with automobiles to prevent the system from working against the driver.

Lastly, I prefer a system, and a world for that matter, where there is always a human in the loop.

We'll just have to agree to disagree. People are stupid. These windshield displays will have to be illuminated at night. I live in a fairly rural area with no lighting on the streets and barely visible lines. If it rains, forget about it. I have to turn my dash lights to extreme dim mode to see the road. I can't imagine anything being displayed on the windshield.

If this system is implemented, it had better be much smarter than the person behind the wheel. And I mean real smart. I can see a lot of kids thinking that their car is just a bigger version of the computer games that they spend hours on.

You should see a real HUD sometimes in various light levels and you will have a different opinion. These things vary in intensity such that they do not overpower what you are looking at.

Done right it may actually improve things for you by highlighting or augmenting things that are difficult to see. Imagine a faint set of lines that represent the lanes of the road superimposed over the actual lanes on the road.

Now imagine those same lines subtly cuing you for your next turn.

As long as the amount of information thrown up on the display is not too much it makes sense to me. The concern or fear is putting too much up or gimmickry data such that it becomes a distraction.

That would be cool!!

I'll agree that it could be a good thing if it's done right. The fear that they will all be striving for the "wow" factor, as opposed to a purely utilitarian useful system is a real one.

There's also the matter of cost. Something that would really work well will be expensive. Probably more than what the car manufacturers or the public is willing to spend. So realistically, we'd probably end up with compromises being made, and a so-so, marginal system being installed.

How much to replace that cracked windshield when you catch a pebble on the highway?

I also have an issue with the fact, that as our machines get safer and smarter, the operators of those machines get proportionally dumber. We've got a generation of kids coming up behind us that take the safety features that they're surrounded with for granted. As a result, I don't think they are developing the basic survival skills that us older guys take for granted.

One more thing..................suppose you're a 16-19 year old kid, driving on a back country road, and you've got the outline of the road superimposed on the windshield...........................................

I think you know the answer to that one. I'm going to crank up the stereo and push the envelope as far as it will go.

You wrote, "How much to replace that cracked windshield when you catch a pebble on the highway?"

Marginally more expensive. The only difference is the anti-reflective coating on one side of the glass to prevent a double image from reflecting on the inside and outside of the glass.

If volumes are high enough such a system would probably be in the range of a good stereo system in your car or maybe cheaper.

I agree with Kram on this one, as a vast majority of automobile drivers are NOT pilots. My kid brother is a Retired USAF/NJANG fighter pilot (flew frontline F-4E, F-15A/C, F-106A & F-16A/C fighters over his 27 year career), and he has stated to me in the past that the plans of the auto makers to include these devices in future autos is a huge mistake. He refuses to buy any car with a HUD.....it's also another thing that can malfunction and repairing it will cost you you're first born and an arm in the repair process. We got on this discussion last Christmas because we're both car junkies.

Having a Heads-Up-Display (HUD) project all sorts of data on the windscreen is going to be a huge distraction. Couple that device with cells phones, CD/DVD players, etc. will only spell disaster in the making.

If HUD's are incorporated in autos, hopefully they'll only provide very basic information like speed, tachometer, engine temp, oil pressure, and "idiot lights".....hopefully there will be a off switch provided!

Actually, I see the HUD as providing speed and navigational data. The rest can be kept on the gauge console where it has been for years.

Where a HUD would be useful is providing GPS oriented navigation cues such as arrows that overlay the street where you are supposed to turn or visual augmentation in situations where vision is impaired (i.e., fog, snow, rain, sun glare, etc.).

The concern everyone has here, and a very valid one, is putting more and more unnecessary junk on the display such as radio, text messages, cameras, and other distracting information.

While primitive HUDs have been on cars for a long time, the big advancements today are head and eye tracking. This technology allows HUD overlays to precisely align with real out the window visuals, even when the driver moves their head.

Personally, I want none of it. I am a manual gearbox guy that prefers real gauges and round knobs for their radio.

I'm with you on that one......give me a 5-speed (or 6-speed) manual tranny and analog real-time gauges (that won't fry or do a meltdown) any day, not a bunch of "idiot lights" that go off after the damage has already been done!

My most favorite old bucket of bolts was a '76 TR-6 which had the old analog gauges and manual transmission (but hated the electrical system with a passion). Boy, was that a fun car to drive on the country back roads, except that I froze my arse off with it's leaky ragtop during the winter months!

Even better... 1966 or 1967 Triumph TR-4A with a TR-6 steering wheel.

The TR-4 4-banger produced more power than the TR-6.

However, the old 1966-67 Jag XKE ragtop is my favorite.

As I said in my earlier post, some HUD style visual cues would be useful in extreme weather situations, like heavy fog, where normal vision is compromised. But...

The problem with true HUD systems is that they require some level of boresighting with the vehicle and the driver's eye box. The visual cues need to be virtual images at some minimum distance in front of the vehicle (at least 20 feet, usually), and they need to relate to the edges of the car and to the driver. Not only is the optics system to do this expensive (I know, I worked on such systems for both the military and for first-responder vehicles) which is well beyond what the car makers would pay, but the ability to do some level of boresighting is complicated by the range of sizes of drivers and how they adjust the seat (unlike the military that controls the sizes of pilots by selection and each pilot adjust the seat to match the HUD). --So as a result the car makers want to do it cheaply, and it just can't be effective. In fact it can be dangerous if the virtual image is seriously misaligned.

A few simple messages like a low fuel warning, traffic stopped ahead, or cruise control engaged, etc, could be helpful. A cheap lens can be used to make the virtual image, and it could be reflected off a small reflective zone on the windshield outside of the driver's main field of view.

Let's take a look at this. How many cars in the world? How many drivers in the world?

How many aircraft in the world? How many pilots?

There is no way you can compare these two in the context of being similar, as far as cockpits and training go.

Throw makeup, coffee, hair, cellphone and a few other distractions at the driver and you've got problems.

You live in a world in which auto makers go through hoops of human factors evaluation and you are allowed to stick your Tom Tom anywhere in the field of vision.

Running the two lanes of Arizona and New Mexico at night I'd have given body parts for even a hint of what was beyond my headlights.

I think I would miss my dashboard instruments.

You don't need that information to drive a car. Its good to reference from time to time. Hardly critical mission data.

eg you only look at your speedo if you see a cop car right?

I bought a Tom Tom satnav unit with 5" display in October specifically to guide me from the Ferry terminal at Amsterdam to Munich in Germany. The unit was marvelous at first guiding me through the rush hour traffic in a right hand drive British car. Later on I found that the extra information was distracting me from the traffic situation on the autobahn. The Tom Tom would display lots of information about the roads and towns to right and left plus warning bells to indicate possible speed camera locations which were an unwanted distraction. When you are doing 100mph and alarm bells go off you instinctively take your eyes off the road to read the displayed message. Many metres of road/traffic pass by before you get your eyes back on the road and I had a couple of 'near misses' as a result.

Another problem with satnavs is they will tell you the road has no upper speed limit, (Germany) when in fact you are driving through road works with a mandatory 80km limit - quick way to lose your licence!

There are already stories about airline pilots who are so reliant on instruments that they have forgotten the basic flying skills - how long before your average car driver becomes just a half-awake extension of the on-board computer!

The most significant improvement to safety (in the U.S.) would be more stringent and frequent practical driving test for drivers, imho. Let's get the 90 year old confused driver or the idiot who doesn't understand the basics of "right of way" off the road before we worry about adding displays to the windshield.

On my motorcycle there is one gage, a speedo and thats all, I am giving total attention to the area that i am in and the cars around me. If i had to constantly look at a display i would end up in a body bag.

Ron

I almost ran myself off the road on a bike one time because of a HUD. It was a wasp that bounced off my chest and ended up walking around on the inside of the face plate of my helmet.

My Buick had a HUD with speedo and turn signals. It was more distracting than useful and I turned it off. The last thing today's drivers need is more stuff to play with while they should be watching the road.

I love my GPS, but I wouldn't want it superimposed on my view of the road.

That said, an emergency warning HUD based on radar for snow and fog conditions could prevent an accident.