Increased visual and cognitive demands emphasize the importance of meeting visual needs at all distances while driving

Abstract

Having an optimal quality of vision as well as adequate cognitive capacities is known to be essential for driving safety. However, the interaction between vision and cognitive mechanisms while driving remains unclear. We hypothesized that, in a context of high cognitive load, reduced visual acuity would have a negative impact on driving behavior, even when the acuity corresponds to the legal threshold for obtaining a driving license in Canada, and that the impact observed on driving performance would be greater with the increase in the threshold of degradation of visual acuity. In order to investigate this relationship, we examined driving behavior in a driving simulator under optimal and reduced vision conditions through two scenarios involving different levels of cognitive demand. These were: 1. a simple rural driving scenario with some pre-programmed events and 2. a highway driving scenario accompanied by a concurrent task involving the use of a navigation device. Two groups of visual quality degradation (lower/ higher) were evaluated according to their driving behavior. The results support the hypothesis: A dual task effect was indeed observed provoking less stable driving behavior, but in addition to this, by statistically controlling the impact of cognitive load, the effect of visual load emerged in this dual task context. These results support the idea that visual quality degradation impacts driving behavior when combined with a high mental workload driving environment while specifying that this impact is not present in the context of low cognitive load driving condition.

Post-coronavirus disease 2019 functional impairments, limitations, and restrictions: A prospective cohort study based on the international classification of functioning, disability, and health

“…Driving requires high demands linked to attention and concentration. 53 Another factor is that both driving fatigue and distraction are manifestations of insufficient attention being allocated to driving tasks. 54 Yan et al demonstrated the correlation between driving performance and executive control function.…”

The effect of mental load on psychophysical and visual evoked potential visual acuity

“…Although significant, the magnitude of the changes in acuity we found with mental load are small, being less than one line on a logMAR chart. The effect of mental load on critical vision tasks may be greater for complex real-world tasks such as driving, however, 24 particularly if mental load causes a general (i.e., not modality specific) impairment in performance. Although such a generalised effect might be expected to manifest more in measures requiring subjective responses, we did not find that our subjective measure of acuity (Freiburg Vision Test) was more influenced by mental load than our objective measure (sweep VEP).…”