Providing Views of the Driving Scene to Drivers' Conversation Partners Mitigates Cell-Phone-Related Distraction

• Published in: Psychological science Vol. 25; no. 12; pp. 2136 - 2146
• Main Authors: Gaspar, John G., Street, Whitney N., Windsor, Matthew B., Carbonari, Ronald, Kaczmarski, Henry, Kramer, Arthur F., Mathewson, Kyle E.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01-12-2014; Sage Publications; SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
• Subjects: Activity levels. Psychomotricity; Adult; Applied psychology; Attention; Automobile driving; Automobile Driving - psychology; Automobiles; Awareness; Biological and medical sciences; Braking; Cell Phone - statistics & numerical data; Cell phones; Cellular telephones; Communication; Consciousness; Conversation; Distraction; Drivers; Driving; Female; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Human behaviour; Humans; Male; Mobile phones; Passenger traffic; Passengers; Psychology; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Risk; Safety; Simulation; Situational awareness; Talking; Telecommunications traffic; Traffic; Transportation. City planning; Utterances; Video telephones; Vigilance. Attention. Sleep; Young Adult; divided attention; dual-task performance; distracted driving; Human; Mobile phone; Vehicle driving; Collision; Traffic accident; Cognition; Conversation; Experimental study; Language; Divided attention; Social interaction; Concurrent task; Distraction; Performance; Simulator
• ISSN: 0956-7976; 1467-9280
• DOI: 10.1177/0956797614549774

Cell-phone use impairs driving safety and performance. This impairment may stem from the remote partner's lack of awareness about the driving situation. In this study, pairs of participants completed a driving simulator task while conversing naturally in the car and while talking on a hands-free cell phone. In a third condition, the driver drove while the remote conversation partner could see video of both the road ahead and the driver's face. We tested the extent to which this additional visual information diminished the negative effects of cell-phone distraction and increased situational awareness. Collision rates for unexpected merging events were high when participants drove in a cell-phone condition but were reduced when they were in a videophone condition, reaching a level equal to that observed when they drove with an in-car passenger or drove alone. Drivers and their partners made shorter utterances and made longer, more frequent traffic references when they spoke in the videophone rather than the cell-phone condition. Providing a view of the driving scene allows remote partners to help drivers by modulating their conversation and referring to traffic more often.