Abstract
In-vehicle devices and infotainment systems occasionally lead to driver distraction, and as a result, increase the risk of missing on-road information. In the current study, a novel multi-touch interface for an in-vehicle infotainment system was evaluated, which potentially requires less visual attention and thus may reduce distraction and increase safety. The interface was compared with a functionally similar control interface in terms of hazard perception metrics and mental workload. Twenty-two participants drove a simulated route once with each system. During each drive, which included eight potentially-hazardous scenarios, participants were instructed to interact with one of the in-vehicle interfaces to perform phone calls or to navigate to specified destinations. Eye-gaze data were collected throughout the drive to evaluate whether participants detected the hazards while interacting with the in-vehicle interface, how much time they needed to identify them, and for how long they engaged with the secondary task. Additionally, after each drive, participants completed a NASA R-TLX questionnaire to evaluate their subjective workload during their engagement with the secondary tasks. Participants using the multi-touch interface needed less time to complete each secondary task and were quicker at identifying potential hazards around them. However, the probability of detecting hazards was similar for both interfaces. Finally, when using the multi-touch interface, participants reported lower subjective workload. The use of a multi-touch interface was found to improve drivers’ performance in terms of identifying hazards quicker than the control condition. The road safety and driver distraction implications of this novel interface are discussed.
Highlights
While driving, drivers occasionally engage with secondary tasks and become distracted
The visual-manual driver distraction guidelines (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 2012), adopted and applied by most manufacturers, suggest that any visual-manual task that may be performed on a system, should be designed in such a way that it “can be completed by the driver while driving with glances away from the roadway of 2 s or less and a cumulative time spent glancing away from the roadway of 12 s or less” (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 2012, p. 10)
Similar results, supporting Hypothesis 3, were found for the second linear regression model with regard to the speech-based modality such that interface type had a significant effect on hazard identification time [F(1, 93) = 31.93, p < 0.05], with participants identifying the hazards quicker when using the multi-touch interface (MTI) (M = 0.45 s, SD = 1.27) than when using the control interface (CI) (M = 0.72 s, SD = 0.75)
Summary
Drivers occasionally engage with secondary tasks and become distracted. Speech-based interfaces reduce the time required to complete tasks and drivers’ subjective workload (Itoh et al, 2004). Yager (2013), for example, has tested drivers’ distraction by asking drivers to engage in secondary tasks and to respond to occasional illuminating lights. Even though using speech-based interfaces reduce drivers’ reaction times to the illuminating light compared with manual-interfaces, they still react slower than drivers who do not engage in a data-entry task at all. In another study (Lee et al, 2001), the use of speech-based interfaces caused a 30% increase in drivers’ reaction times to periodic braking of a lead vehicle and introduced a higher workload. In a study regarding cognitive distraction in driving (Strayer et al, 2014), the authors have found that the cognitive demands of speechbased interfaces pose a significant threat to traffic safety, when used for specific tasks such as texting and e-mailing
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