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We controlled participants’ glance behavior while using head-down displays (HDDs) and head-up displays (HUDs) to isolate driving behavioral changes due to use of different display types across different driving environments.

Recently, HUD technology has been incorporated into vehicles, allowing drivers to, in theory, gather display information without moving their eyes away from the road. Previous studies comparing the impact of HUDs with traditional displays on human performance show differences in both drivers’ visual attention and driving performance. Yet no studies have isolated glance from driving behaviors, which limits our ability to understand the cause of these differences and resulting impact on display design.

We developed a novel method to control visual attention in a driving simulator. Twenty experienced drivers sustained visual attention to in-vehicle HDDs and …