Human-Vehicle Interaction

The field studying how people communicate, negotiate, and coordinate with vehicles and their occupants — including drivers, passengers, and, increasingly, automated systems. Human-vehicle interaction encompasses internal interfaces (dashboards, voice assistants, autonomous-driving handoff), external interfaces (eHMIs, headlights, horns, turn signals), and the informal negotiation between pedestrians and drivers that governs everyday crossings. For accessibility, human-vehicle interaction is where assumptions about sighted, hearing, able-bodied users are most visible and most consequential: interior controls often fail blind, low-vision, or motor-impaired drivers and passengers, while exterior communication has historically excluded DHH, blind, and cognitively disabled pedestrians.