Dynamic side-view mirror: Assisting situation awareness in blind spots

This paper proposes a novel driver assistance system for enhancing driver recognition of vehicles in blind spots when executing lane changes. The system changes the yaw angle of the host vehicle´s side-view mirror when another vehicle is in the blind spot. There are two design alternatives: (1) the system dynamically changes the side-view mirror angle or (2) the system turns on a lamp in addition to dynamically changing the side-view mirror angle. A cognitive experiment with a driving simulator was conducted for investigating system efficacy and influence on situation awareness of the driver. The results of this experiment show that the lamp may not be necessary and that both systems were effective when another vehicle was in the host vehicle´s right blind spot.