Effects of Cellular Telephone Use While Driving Based on Objective and Subjective Mental Workload Assessment (original) (raw)
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Using mobile telephones: cognitive workload and attention resource allocation
Accident Analysis & Prevention, 2004
Driver distraction is recognized as being one of the central causes of road traffic incidents and mobile telephones are tangible devices (among many other electronic devices) that can distract the driver through changes in workload. Forty participants completed a motorway route characterized by a low level of road complexity in the form of vehicle handling and information processing. A peripheral detection task (PDT) was employed to gauge mental workload. We compared effects of conversation type (simple versus complex) and telephone mode (hands-free versus handheld) to baseline conditions. The participants' reaction times increased significantly when conversing but no benefit of hands-free units over handheld units on rural roads/motorways were found. Thus, in regard to mobile telephones, the content of the conversation was far more important for driving and driver distraction than the type of telephone when driving on a motorway or similar type of road. The more difficult and complex the conversation, the greater the possible negative effect on driver distraction.
Effects of mobile telephone tasks on driving performance: a driving simulator study
Mobile phone use while driving is increasing among road users. Although the most of countries made illegal the cell phone use while driving, the drivers still use it both for calling and texting. Several studies investigated the distraction factors related to the use of mobile while driving and the effects on road safety. The main findings of these studies generally demonstrated an increasing of reaction time and decreasing of driving performance especially during not critical driving conditions, while the evaluation of the effects of mobile use during critical driving conditions is not so much investigates. The overall objective of this work is to contribute to the evaluation of the effects of the mobile phone use on driving safety. Specifically the effects of using cellular phone at the same time the driver is faced with making a critical stopping decision are investigated. The experiments are carried out using an interactive driving simulator. Three different road scenarios (urban road, rural road and motorway) are simulated. Thirty subjects take part to the experiments and drive four times each scenario: one time without calling (control scenario) and the other three times answering the calls by hand-held mobile, hands-free mobile and hands-free voice device. The driver's reaction time, the deceleration rate, the speed and the following distance are evaluated. The main effects of driving and calling are observed in the urban scenario, where the decreasing of driving performance is much more evident than in the rural and motorway scenario. Not significant differences on driving performances are found across the three telephone modes.
The effects of a mobile telephone task on driver behaviour in a car following situation
Accident Analysis & Prevention, 1995
The effects of a mobile telephone task on young and elderly drivers choice reaction time, headway, lateral position, and workload were studied when the subjects were driving in a car-following situation, in the VTI driving simulator. It was found that a mobile telephone task had a negative effect upon the drivers choice reaction time, and that the effect was more pronounced for the elderly drivers. Furthermore, the subjects did not compensate for their increased reaction time by increasing their headway during the phone task. The subjects mental workload, as measured by the NASA-TLX, increased as a function of the mobile telephone task. No effect on the subjects lateral position could be detected. Taken together, these results indicate that the accident risk can increase when a driver is using the mobile telephone in a car following situation. The reasons for the increased risk, and possible ways to eliminate it, are also discussed.
Cognitive demands of hands-free-phone conversation while driving
Transportation Research Part F-traffic Psychology and Behaviour, 2002
In four field experiments the participants drove an instrumented car provided with a hands-free phone and performed several cognitive tasks while driving including phone conversations. The study focussed the cognitive component of the conversations, excluding dialling. The cognitive demands of the conversations were varied and in two of the experiments the same tasks had two versions: by phone and in live conversation with the experimenter in the car. Several dependent measures like visual search behaviour, driving speed, visual detection and response selection capacities and others were analysed. Like in previous experiments of the same authors the more demanding cognitive tasks produced higher interference effects, but when the same tasks performed by phone were compared with its live versions no differences were observed. Once the manual phone operation has been technically suppressed the risk of phone conversations relies on the demands of the message content and its equivalent to talking to a passenger. Implications for safety are discussed.
Behavioural effects of mobile telephone use during simulated driving
Ergonomics, 1995
The effects on driving performance of using a hands-free, mobile telephone were investigated in a pursuit-tracking task that simulated driving. Twenty subjects in two age groups, 19-26 years (median = 21 years) and 40-51 years (median 45-5 years), participated, with five males and five females in each group. The primary task was driving safely. The subjects drove for 20 min in each of three secondary task blocks with (i) a simple telephone conversation about a familiar topic, (ii) a difficult telephone conversation, incorporating a test of working memory, and (iii) car radio tuning and listening. Half of the driving was done on a simulated firm road surface and half on a slippery road surface. The subjects' behaviour was subsequently observed and classified in four activity categories, two without and two with a secondary task, with driving (i) on a clear road, and (ii) with obstacles, and with driving involving the secondary task components of (iii) communication, and (iv) instrument manipulation. The results show different patterns of driving performance on the two road surfaces. For driving on the slippery road, a deterioration was especially marked during manipulation of the instruments, in particular the radio, which required more prolonged manipulation than the hands-free telephone. Driving during an easy telephone conversation was associated with the least performance decrement, and could, in some cases, be seen as facilitatory. The female subjects tended to perform less well than the male subjects while driving on a slippery road. Some of this difference could be attributed to less previous driving experience. In general, the male drivers exhibited better control while driving under difficult conditions. There was no difference in driving proficiency between the age groups. It is concluded that simply conversing over a hands-free telephone while driving does not in itself impair performance. However, a difficult 1 conversation may affect the driving adversely, and any prolonged manipulation of the telephone is liable to produce a performance decrement, particularly under conditions that put heavy demands on the driver's attention and skill.
Effects of practice, age, and task demands, on interference from a phone task while driving
Accident Analysis and Prevention, 2005
Experimental research on the effects of cellular phone conversations on driving indicates that the phone task interferes with many driving-related functions, especially with older drivers. Unfortunately in past research (1) the dual task conditions were not repeated in order to test for learning, (2) the ‘phone tasks’ were not representative of real conversations, and (3) most often both the driving and the phone tasks were experimenter-paced. In real driving drivers learn to time-share various tasks, they can pace their driving to accommodate the demands of a phone conversation, and they can even partially pace the phone conversation to accommodate the driving demands. The present study was designed to better simulate real driving conditions by providing a simulated driving environment with repeated experiences of driving while carrying two different hands-free ‘phone’ tasks with different proximities to real conversations. In the course of five sessions of driving and using the phone, there was a learning effect on most of the driving measures. In addition, the interference from the phone task on many of the driving tasks diminished over time as expected. Finally, the interference effects were greater when the phone task was the often-used artificial math operations task than when it was an emotionally involving conversation, when the driving demands were greater, and when the drivers were older. Thus, the deleterious effects of conversing on the phone are very real initially, but may not be as severe with continued practice at the dual task, especially for drivers who are not old.
Effects of mobile phone use on driving performance in a multiresource workload scenario
Traffic Injury Prevention, 2019
Objective: This study explores the influence of mobile phone secondary tasks on driving from the perspective of visual, auditory, cognitive, and psychomotor (VACP) multiple resource theory, and it is anticipated to benefit the human-centered design of mobile phone use while driving. Methods: The present study investigated 6 typical phone use scenarios while driving and analyzed the effects of phone use distractions on driving performance. Thirty-six participants were recruited to participate in this experiment. We abandoned traditional secondary tasks such as conversations or dialing, in which cognitive resources can become interference. Instead, we adopted an arrow secondary task and an n-back delayed digit recall task. Results: The results show that all mobile phone use scenarios have a significant influence on driving performance, especially on lateral vehicle control. The visual plus psychomotor resource occupation scenario demonstrated the greatest deterioration of driving performance, and there was a significant deterioration of driving speed and steering wheel angle once the psychomotor resource was occupied. Conclusions: Phone use distraction leads to visual, cognitive, and/or motor resource functional limitations and thus causes lane violations and traffic accidents.
The effects of mobile telephoning on driving performance
Accident Analysis & Prevention, 1991
The effects of telephoning while driving were studied in three different traffic conditions, i.e. in light traffic on a quiet motorway, in heavy traffic on a four-lane ring-road, and in city traffic. Twelve subjects, unfamiliar with mobile telephones, drove an instrumented vehicle for one hour each day during three weeks and while in each of the three traffic conditions, had to operate the mobile telephone for a short while. To ensure a fixed "heavy traffic load" in the second condition, the subjects were instructed to follow another instrumented vehicle (at a safe distance). The results showed a significant effect of telephoning while driving as opposed to normal driving (i.e., not involving telephone conversation), on the effort subjectively measured by an effort scale and objectively measured by heartrate indices and on some of the measured parameters of driving performance. One half of the subjects had to operate the telephone manually, the other half performed the telephone task with a handsfree mobile telephone set. The subjects who operated the handsfree telephone showed better control over the test vehicle than the subjects who operated the handheld telephone, as measured by the steering wheel movements. Also, a clear improvement over time in the course of the 15 test days was found for some of the measurements. As a consequence of the results, some advice concerning mobile telephoning can be given to authorities, manufacturers, and users.
A Comparison of Subjective Mental Workload Measures in Driving Contexts
Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea, 2013
Objective: This study aims to compare the usefulness of subjective measures which are comprised of existing methods like NASA-TLX, Bedford-scale and ZEIS and newly developed method like DALI in measuring drivers' mental workload in terms of validity, sensitivity and diagnosticity. Background: Nowadays, with the development of intelligent vehicle and HMI, mental workload of driver has become more and more important. For this reason, the studies on drivers' mental workload about driving situation and the use of information technology equipment such as mobile phones and navigations were conducted intensively. However, the studies on measuring drivers' mental workload were rarely conducted. Moreover, most of studies on comparison of subjective measures were used with performance based measure. However, performance based measures can cause distraction effect with subjective measures. Method: Participants (N=19) were engaged in a driving simulation experiment in 2 driving contexts (downtown driving and highway driving context). The experiment has 2 sessions according to driving contexts. The level of difficulties by driving contexts were adjusted according to existence of intersections, traffic signs and signals, billboards and the number of doublings. Moreover, as criteria of concurrent validity and sensitivity, the EEG data were recorded before and during the sessions. Results: The results indicated that all subjective methods were correlates with EEG in highway driving. On the contrary to this, in downtown driving, all subjective methods were not correlates with EEG. In terms of sensitivity, multi-dimensional scales (NASA-TLX, DALI) were the only ones to identify differences between high way and downtown driving. Finally, in terms of diagnosticity, DALI was the most suitable method for evaluating drivers' mental workload in driving context. Conclusion: The DALI as newly developed method dedicated to evaluate driver's mental workload was superior in terms of sensitivity and diagnosticity. However, researchers should consider the characteristics of each subjective method synthetically according to research objective by selecting the method in subjective measures. Application: The results of this study could be applied to the intelligent vehicle and next generation of HMI design to decrease mental workload of driver and for the development of new subjective method in vehicle domain.
Accident Analysis & Prevention, 1999
This study was aimed at investigating drivers' ability to detect a car ahead decelerating, while doing mobile phone related tasks. Nineteen participants aged between 20 and 29 years, (2000 -125 000 km driving experience) drove at 80 km/h, 50 m behind a lead car, on a 30 km section of motorway in normal traffic. During each trial the lead car started to decelerate at an average of 0.47 m/s 2 while the participant either looked at the car in front (control), continuously dialed series of three random integers on a numeric keypad (divided visual attention), or performed a memory and addition task (non-visual attention). The results indicated that drivers' detection ability was impaired by about 0.5 s in terms of brake reaction time and almost 1 s in terms of time-to-collision, when they were doing the non-visual task whilst driving. This impairment was similar to when the drivers were dividing their visual attention between the road ahead and dialing numbers on the keypad. It was concluded that neither a hands-free option nor a voice controlled interface removes the safety problems associated with the use of mobile phones in a car.