Steering a vehicle is a task increasingly challenging the driver
in terms of mental resources. Reasons for this include the
increasing volume of road traffic and a rising quantity of road
signs, traffic lights, and other distractions at the roadside
(such as billboards), to name a few. The application of Advanced
Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), in particular if taking
advantage of Ambient Intelligence (AmI) technology, can help to
increase the perceptivity of a driver, leading as a direct
consequence to more relaxed mental stress of the same. One
situation where we see potential in the application of such a
system are merging areas on the expressway where two or more
varying traffic streams converge into a single one. In order to
reduce cognitive liabilities (in this work expressed as panic or
anger) drivers are exposed to while merging we have developed two
behavioral rules. The first (increased range of perception)
enables drivers to change early upstream into a spare lane,
allowing the merging traffic to join into mainline traffic at
reduced conflicts, the second (inter-car distance
management in the broader area of merging) provide drivers
with recommendations of when and how to change lanes at the
best. From a technical point of view, the VibraSeat, a
in-house developed car seat with integrated tactile actuators, is
used for delivering information about perception range and
inter-car distances to the driver in a way that does not stress
his/her mental capabilities. To ?figure out possi