Preliminary Study of Brake Pedal Location Accuracy

Three experiments of brake pedal location accuracy were conducted using 24 subject drivers. The first experiment tested the accuracy of recall of drivers for the brake pedal location of the vehicle with which they were very familiar. The second experiment examined the accuracy of recall for a brake pedal location with which they had recent practice. The last experiment attempted to determine if practice with one brake pedal location would interfere with the accuracy of reproduction of a newly learned pedal location. The results of the experiments indicate that subject drivers have difficulty in reproducing the location of brake pedals. This difficulty exists for familiar brake pedal locations as well as newly learned brake pedal locations. Further there is an indication that practice with one brake pedal location may influence the accuracy of reproducing the location one newly learned.