Abstract
Smartphones and other modern technologies have introduced multiple new forms of distraction that color the modern driving experience. While many smartphone functions aim to improve driving by providing the driver with real-time navigation and traffic updates, others, such as texting, are not compatible with driving and are often the cause of accidents. Because both functions elicit driver attention, an outstanding question is the degree to which drivers’ naturalistic interactions with navigation and texting applications differ in regard to brain and behavioral indices of distracted driving. Here, we employed functional near-infrared spectroscopy to examine the cortical activity that occurs under parametrically increasing levels of smartphone distraction during naturalistic driving. Our results highlight a significant increase in bilateral prefrontal and parietal cortical activity that occurs in response to increasingly greater levels of smartphone distraction that, in turn, predicts changes in common indices of vehicle control.
Highlights
Smartphones and other modern technologies have introduced multiple new forms of distraction that color the modern driving experience
We argue that functional near-infrared spectroscopy affords a light-weight and portable brain imaging modality that is less sensitive to movement, making it amenable to driving studies[26,27,28,29]
Follow-up comparisons identified significantly lower lateral acceleration for open-ended text responding (OER) and GPS events compared to text banner, forced-choice text responding (FCR), and normal control driving
Summary
Smartphones and other modern technologies have introduced multiple new forms of distraction that color the modern driving experience. Despite classifying texting as one of the most dangerous tasks to do while driving (second only to driving drunk), 51% of drivers reported interacting (i.e., sending/receiving texts, navigation) with their phone while driving[6] This is troubling, as drivers distracted by a secondary task contributed to over 22% of all crashes and nearcrashes, with over one third of these secondary tasks involving interaction with a wireless device[7,8]. Previous research using fMRI has identified the engagement of a network of brain regions including the motor, parietal, occipital, prefrontal, and cerebellar cortices that are commonly elicited during driving tasks[11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19] Common driving maneuvers such as turning, reversing, stopping, and monitoring other cars and traffic rules have all been shown to elicit activity from these r egions[16,17]. Because movement is severely restricted in fMRI studies, the ability to interact with a smartphone as one normally would is not possible
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