Smartwatches vs. Smartphones

Abstract

This work seeks to understand whether the unique features of a smartwatch, compared to a smartphone, mitigate or exacerbate driver distraction due to notifications, and to provide insights about drivers' perceptions of the risks associated with using smartwatches while driving. As smartwatches are gaining popularity among consumers, there is a need to understand how smartwatch use may influence driving performance. Previous driving research has examined voice calling on smartwatches, but not interactions with notifications, a key marketed feature. Engaging with notifications (e.g., reading and texting) on a handheld device is a known distraction associated with increased crash risks. Two driving simulator studies compared smartwatch to smartphone notifications. Experiment I asked participants to read aloud brief text notifications and Experiment II had participants manually select a response to arithmetic questions presented as notifications. Both experiments investigated the resulting glances to and physical interactions with the devices, as well as self-reported risk perception. Experiment II also investigated driving performance and self-reported knowledge/expectation about legislation surrounding the use of smart devices while driving. Experiment I found that participants were faster to visually engage with the notification on the smartwatch than the smartphone, took longer to finish reading aloud the notifications, and exhibited more glances longer than 1.6 s. Experiment II found that participants took longer to reply to notifications and had longer overall glance durations on the smartwatch than the smartphone, along with longer brake reaction times to lead vehicle braking events. Compared to the no device baseline, both devices increased lane position variability and resulted in higher self-reported perceived risk. Experiment II participants also considered that smartwatch use while driving deserves penalties equal to or less than smartphone use. The findings suggest that smartwatches may have road safety consequences. Given the common view among participants to associate smartwatch use with equal or less traffic penalties than smartphone use, there may be a disconnect between drivers' actual performance and their perceptions about smartwatch use while driving.

Texting While Driving: A Literature Review on Driving Simulator Studies

“…For eye-tracking, some researchers used simple video cameras and extracted the information by manual coding of the recorded video: [54,58,60,68,93,99]. Others used specialized eye-tracking devices: Fovio eye tracker [20]; Ergoneers' Dikablis Essential head-mounted eye tracker [36,55]; eye-tracking system developed by Seeing Machines, Ltd. (Canberra, Australia): faceLAB™ 4.1 [90]; faceLAB™ 5.0 [31]; Pupil Lab's Pro head-mounted eye tracker [100]; SmartEye6.0 [69]; eye-tracking glasses developed by SensoMotoric Instruments, Berlin, Germany [74,78,101]; Tobii Pro Glasses 2 [80,84], Ergoneers Dikablis Eye Tracker 3 glasses [102]; and one paper did not mention the device. A MindCap XL headband equipped with a NeuroSky sensor was used to measure brain activity [59].…”

“…For example, Glass-delivered messages did not eliminate the distracting cognitive demands, finding that both Google Glass and writing a message on the phone require the same attention resources. Moreover, whether it comes from a smartwatch or smartphone, engaging with notifications carries the risk of taking the attention from the driving task [36].…”

“…Some studies investigated the effects of cell phone use in comparison with other secondary tasks, such as talking to a passenger (two studies: [49,69]), eating (four studies: [56,57,70,71]), radio tuning (five studies: [67,69,[72][73][74]), using navigation systems (three studies: [33,58,74]), taking pictures [75] or selfies [76], adjusting climate control [72], reading emails (three studies: [55,63,77]), drinking [29], watching video and using social media [63], switching display view and searching songs [55], and sharing numbers [76]. Other studies compare phone use with other types of devices, such as the smartwatch (three studies: [36,68,78]) and Google Glass (two studies: [54,79]). Moreover, instead of using the phone for texting, some researchers used smartphones to perform tasks on social media, such as using Facebook (three studies: [20,80,81]), Snapchat, Instagram [82], Whatsapp [83], or some self-developed applications [60,84].…”

“…One experiment was performed in a driving simulator with three DOFs: [90], and three experiments were performed in two-DOF driving simulators: [20,55,82]. We also extracted some commercially available class A and B driving simulators: Foerst Driving Simulator (three studies: [81,91,92]), PatrolSim high-fidelity driving simulator [66], NADS MiniSim [36], and EF-X from ECA-Faros (two studies: [31,80]). Most systems are developed by Systems Technology Inc., Hawthorne, CA, USA, both hardware and software (used in 10 of the included articles).…”

“…In 50 studies (75% of the total number of articles), the first task was to free drive on a route or to follow a path along which one or more incidents occurred. Examples of such incidents include the sudden appearance of an animal on the roadway [29,81], the sudden appearance of a pedestrian crossing the street [18][19][20]51,60,65,76,90], a cyclist entering the roadway [36,51,65], a parked car pulls out onto the road [18,90], and so on.…”