PONE-D-20-07881

Age-related differences in correction behavior for unintended acceleration

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr Hasegawa,

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Feng Chen

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Partly

Reviewer #2: Partly

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: N/A

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: It's an interesting topic, here are some suggestions for the authors to consider.

1.The paper structure is poor. It should be reorganized carefully, such as summarizing the research purpose in brief in the introduction section, adding conclusion section, rewriting the abstract, summarizing the testing scheme in a table, etc.

2.Line 227-234, the conclusion is doubtful. There are also lots of previous studies proved that the perception-reaction time for the elderly is greater than the younger adults, especially in the transportation engineering field. Please providing more proofs and discussion on this point.

3.In the Apparatus and Stimuli section, present the apparatus and testing scene in figures. The study used a racing game controller to conduct the test, maybe it’s economical but a little bit simple. Are there any previous studies using such similar scheme? How to prove the reliability?

4.Table 2, illustrating the data in some figures to provide more information, not only the Mean and SD.

Reviewer #2: The manuscript investigated the research question whether aging can impact the correction behavior for unintended accelerations. This study is properly organized. There are several concerns with the paper as listed below:

1. The abstract is not properly written. It should be concise and comprehensive. The main body of the abstract doesn't even include results from the statistical analysis:"During most trials, the vehicle decelerated/stopped when the brake pedal was applied in a normal manner. In a few trials, however, stepping on the brake pedal resulted in sudden acceleration of the vehicle (i.e., the occurrence of the unintended acceleration); when this occurred, the participants had to release the pedal and re-step on another pedal to decelerate/stop the vehicle as quickly as possible. The latency between the onset of the unintended acceleration and the release of the pedal and the period from the release of the pedal until re-stepping on another pedal were found to be longer for older adults. "

2. The conclusion that "This suggests that age-related declines in the correction behavior may be the main cause of the fatal accidents caused by unintended acceleration. " is not supported by the study.

3. The literature review is not exhaustive, several papers should be acknowledged and cited in the paper:

[1] Feng Chen, Haorong Peng, Xiaoxiang Ma, Jieyu Liang, Wei Hao, Xiaodong Pan.“Examining the safety of trucks under crosswind at bridge-tunnel section: A driving simulator study”, Tunnelling and Underground Space Technology, 2019, 92, 103034. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tust.2019.103034

[2] Chen, Feng, Mingtao Song, Xiaoxiang Ma, and Xingyi Zhu. “Assess the Impacts of Different Autonomous Trucks’ Lateral Control Modes on Asphalt Pavement Performance.” Transportation Research C: Emerging Technologies，2019, 103, 17-29.

[3] Bowen Dong, Xiaoxiang Ma, Feng Chen and Suren Chen. “Investigating the Differences of Single- and Multi-vehicle Accident Probability Using Mixed Logit Model", Journal of Advanced Transportation, 2018, UNSP 2702360.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Age-related differences in correction behavior for unintended acceleration

PONE-D-20-07881R1

Dear Dr. Hasegawa,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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Kind regards,

Feng Chen

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No