Interference between concurrent tasks of driving and telephoning.

Abstract

Twenty-four men were given the task of judging whether to drive through gaps which might be larger or smaller than the car. They were also given a telephoning task of checking the accuracy of short sentences. Interference between the concurrently performed tasks was investigated. Telephoning mainly impaired judgments of 'impossible' gaps (p < .01). The control skills employed in steering through 'possible' gaps were not reliably degraded, although speed of driving was reduced (p < .01). Driving increased errors (p<.01) and prolonged response times (p < .005) on the sentence-checking task. It is concluded that telephoning has a minimal effect on the more automatized driving skills, but that perception and decision-making may be critically impaired by switching between visual and auditory inputs J The authors would like to thank the United Kingdom Ministry of Transport for providing some of the apparatus, most of Ss, and two research assistants. The General Post Office kindly provided the radiophone equipment and a technical assistant. The experimental car and financial assistance were supplied by the Medical Research Council. Thanks are also due to the Ministry of Defence (Air) for permitting part of an airfield to be used as a test track. The research was carried out uhder^the general direction of R. Conrad.

Accounting for time-dependent covariates in driving simulator studies

“…The results indeed showed that auditory distractions generate a faster response than the non-distracted condition (auditory distraction vs. no distraction: t(138) ¼ À2.08, p < 0.05, mean difference À0.328 seconds (95% CI À0.640, À0.017); visual distraction vs. no distraction: t(138) ¼ À0.23, p > 0.05, À0.232 seconds (CI À0.545, 0.082)). However, these results conflict with welldocumented results that show that distractions degrade driving performance (Brown et al 1969, Alm and Nilsson 1995, Cooper and Zheng 2002, Lam 2002.…”

Effects of practice, age, and task demands, on interference from a phone task while driving

“…As such, the phone task can be dis-tracting, disruptive to driving, and potentially dangerous (Goodman, 1997;Goodman et al, 1999). This general conclusion is supported by laboratory and driving simulation studies (McKnight and McKnight, 1993;Alm and Nilsson, 1993;Strayer and Johnston, 2001), closed track road studies (Ishida and Matsuura, 2001;Hancock et al, 2003), and open road studies (Brown et al, 1969;Harbluk et al, 2002;Patten et al, 2004).…”

Road Environment and Driver Fatigue

“…For example, in order for an overloaded driver to maintain effective vehicle control, there may be a reduction in the efficiency of processing information from the traffic environment. Existing research provides a number of demonstrations of performance overload where task demands are increased by imposing additional task components, consistent with the prediction of resource theory (e.g., Brown, Tickner & Simmonds, 1969;Harms, 1986;1991). On the basis of the same rationale, Hancock, Wulf, Thom and Fassnacht (1990) have shown that vehicle turn sequences are associated with greater attentional demands than straight driving.…”