NHTSA filed a third driver study of production cockpit software since August 21

The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration asked the Office of Management and Budget to clear an on-road study of production cockpit interfaces, in a notice filed for public inspection on August 26 and published on August 27. It was the third information-collection request the agency had filed on production cockpit software since August 21.

The notice, under docket NHTSA-2024-0072, covers a study of what it calls novel human-machine interface designs. Twenty-four participants aged 18 to 55 will each drive three commercially available production vehicles over the same 20-minute urban route in Phoenix, Arizona, with the order counterbalanced between them. They will be recorded by GoPro cameras and a head-mounted eye tracker, and Exponent is named as the test facility. Total study burden is put at 151 hours. Comments close on September 28.

NHTSA said the study was needed because its Human Factors Design Guidance for Driver-Vehicle Interfaces predates features now shipping in production cars: head-up and augmented-reality displays, large centre-stack screens, touch, speech and gesture input, driver-assistance status telltales, and in-vehicle advertising and e-commerce.

Two earlier requests preceded it. On August 21 the agency asked OMB to clear a study of phone projection systems against built-in cockpit software. On August 26 it opened comment on a study of whether driver monitoring systems detect drowsiness, at the earlier 60-day stage of the same process.

The notice also answered comments on an earlier version. The National Transportation Safety Board said it had not specified what tasks drivers would perform. The Alliance for Automotive Innovation asked for standardized routes, controls for traffic and weather, randomized vehicle order and a justification of the sample size; NHTSA accepted those points and cited a statistical power analysis for the 24 participants. Comments from the XR Association were ruled out of scope, because no vehicle in the sample carries an augmented-reality system.