Toward a Taxonomy of Automobile Driving: I. Tracking

An experiment was conducted to explore the characteristics of straight line tracking performance in automobile driving. Two Ss were used in driving an automobile on a public road at 50, 60, 70, and 80 mph. Photographic records were made of the track of the automobile while the drivers were instructed simply to “drive as straight as possible” at a constant speed. An analysis of the tracking records indicates that different strategies were being employed by the two drivers. One corresponded to the mathematical biophysics formulation of Rashevsky (avoidance of lateral boundaries) while the other operated under the more familiar psychological laboratory tracking task (direct error-feedback). The experiment is an exploratory effort in the microcharacteristics of automobile driving.