Search Results

This study investigated driver glances while engaging in infotainment tasks in a stationary vehicle while surrogate driving: watching a driving video recorded from a driver’s viewpoint and projected on a large screen, performing a lane-tracking task, and performing the Tactile Detection Response Task (TDRT) to measure attentional effects of secondary tasks on event detection and response. Twenty-four participants were seated in a 2014 Toyota Corolla production vehicle with the navigation system option. They performed the lane-tracking task using the vehicle’s steering wheel, fitted with a laser pointer to indicate wheel movement on the driving video. Participants simultaneously performed the TDRT and a variety of infotainment tasks, including Manual and Mixed-Mode versions of Destination Entry and Cancel, Contact Dialing, Radio Tuning, Radio Preset selection, and other Manual tasks. Participants also completed the 0-and 1-Back pure auditory-vocal tasks.

In this age of the Internet of Things, people expect in-vehicle interfaces to work just like a smartphone. Our understanding of the reality of in-vehicle interfaces is quite contrary to that. We review the fundamental principles and metrics for automotive visual-manual driver distraction guidelines. We note the rise in portable device usage in vehicles, and debunk the myth of increased crash risk when conversing on a wireless device. We advocate that portable electronic device makers such as Apple and Google should adopt driver distraction guidelines for application developers (whether for tethered or untethered device use in the vehicle). We present two design implications relevant to safe driving. First, the Rule of Platform Appropriateness: design with basic principles of ergonomics, and with driver's limited visual, manual and cognitive capacity, in mind. Second, the Rule of Simplicity: thoughtful reduction in the complexity of in-vehicle interfaces.

Up to now, there is no standard methodology that addresses how driver distraction is affected by perceptual demand and working memory demand - aside from visual allocation. In 2009, the Peripheral Detection Task (PDT) became a NHTSA recommended measure for driver distraction [1]. Then the PDT task was renamed as the Detection Response Task (DRT) because the International Standards Organization (ISO) has identified this task as a potential method for assessing selective attention in detection of visual, auditory, tactile and haptic events while driving. The DRT is also under consideration for adoption as an ISO standard surrogate test for driver performance for new telematics designs. The Wayne State University (WSU) driver imaging group [2, 3] improved the PDT and created the Enhanced Peripheral Detection Task I (EPDT-I) [4]. The EPDT-I is composed of a simple visual event detection task and a video of a real-world driving scene.

There is little agreement in the field of driving safety as to how to define cognitive distraction, much less how to measure it. Without a definition and metric, it is impossible to make scientific and engineering progress on determining the extent to which cognitive distraction causes crashes, and ways to mitigate it if it does. We show here that different studies are inconsistent in their definitions of cognitive distraction. For example, some definitions do not include cellular conversation, while others do. Some definitions confound cognitive distraction with visual distraction, or cognitive distraction with cognitive workload. Other studies define cognitive distraction in terms of a state of the driver, and others in terms of tasks that may distract the driver. It is little wonder that some studies find that cognitive distraction is a negligible factor in causing crashes, while others assert that cognitive distraction causes more crashes than drunk driving.