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A new and simple technique of simultaneous measurements was developed to investigate changes in drivers’ eye fixations. Using an eye marker system and reference targets mounted on the front bumper of a vehicle, the visual behavior of novice drivers was compared with that of experienced drivers to find visual cues of skillful handling. It was found that the increase in horizontal angular displacement of fixations is approximately linear with the increase in the head displacement. Coefficient of determination for the novice groups is smaller than that for the experienced groups. Vertical angular displacement of fixations was almost the same for both the novice and experienced drivers, but head displacement for the novice drivers was the head-up type and that of the experienced drivers was the general or direct type.

This study investigates the drivers' visual behavior that occurs under conditions of obstacle avoidance with normal and restricted viewing. In the normal viewing, the experienced drivers concentrated on the visual objectives for obstacle avoidance, while the novice drivers sampled the direction of travel quite frequently. In the restricted viewing, the male novice drivers under 20 initiated the compensating visual behavior, but the female novice drivers over 30 displayed the same or a regressive tendency compared with normal viewing. The experienced drivers scanned the obstructions closer in front of the vehicle than the novice drivers in order to increase their intake of visual information.

This study investigates the visual behavior of novice and experienced drivers with three tasks when the stop line disappears from a driver's view before he/she performs a stopping maneuver. The tasks were stopping right in front of the stop line, (a) after traveling in a straight line, (b) after pulling over to the left line, and (c) after pulling over to the right line. The results showed that the range of horizontal fixation locations for the experienced drivers was wider than that for the novice drivers and that the experienced drivers looked closer in front of the car than the novice drivers. These results suggest that the strategies of visual search for the novice drivers were critically concerned with the vehicle's direction of travel under the conditions of high driving tasks.