Impact of information bandwidth of in-vehicle technologies on drivers' attention maintenance performance: A driving simulator study

Abstract

Previous research indicates that inexperienced drivers' ability to maintain their attention on the forward roadway during driving is poorer than experienced drivers, leading to more frequent, excessively long, off-road glances that elevate the risk of crashes. However, whether their poorer attention maintenance ability depends on complexities of in-vehicle technologies has been underexplored. This study directly manipulated information bandwidth (easy or complex) of an in-vehicle monitor and asked twenty-four drivers aged 18-21 to perform a visual number judgment task with either 5 digits (easy) or 11 digits (complex), during simulated driving. Participants had to verbally respond within 15 s whether each string of presented digits contained more odd or even digits. Eye movements were recorded using an eye tracker. Results show that the drivers produced a greater number of off-road glances and longer summed excess glance durations under a 1.5-s threshold when the in-vehicle task imposed greater information processing demand. In practice, designers of in-vehicle technologies should consider information-processing demands of in-vehicle tasks required by the technologies to minimize the frequency of excessively long off-road glances during driving.