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Vehicle automation may improve road safety because most crashes are caused by human error. However, reliable autonomous vehicles in which the ‘driver’ never has to take over the wheel are still in the distant future. At first, cars will only drive themselves under certain conditions. When these conditions are not met the car will prompt the driver with a take-over request (TOR).

In this study, a simulator was used to investigate whether drivers could spot latent hazards in the road and traffic scene immediately after manual driving had become obligatory (that is, after a TOR). A latent hazard is a traffic situation in which precursors of a hazard are visible. The number of latent hazards spotted was assumed to be an indicator of the driver’s situation awareness. Latent hazards may or may not materialize into acute threatening situations in which a crash is very likely. The simulator drive contained eight latent hazards (that …