Taxi-Hailing Apps

Abstract

The use of taxi-hailing apps is quite popular in recent years. Although a number of epidemiological, on- road and simulator-based studies reported the negative impact of distraction on a driver’s behavior, the effect of using taxi-hailing apps on a professional driver’s performance has not been fully studied. This study aimed to identify the influence of using taxi-hailing apps on driving performance in a simulated driving environment. Forty male taxi drivers were divided into two groups, using one taxi-hailing app or two taxi hailing apps. They were asked to complete two driving tasks with one or two apps (i.e., distracted condition) and two tasks without any app used (i.e., baseline condition). The current study found that participants using two taxi-hailing apps at the same time drove slower and spent less time speeding, but exhibited shorter time to avoid a collision, made more wrong decisions, and spent a longer time period of cell phone interface glance duration and glanced at the interface more frequently than the baseline condition. Taxi drivers with single app exhibited similar driving behaviors but performance decrement was less severe than those using dual hailing apps. These findings increase our understanding of driver distraction and have potential implications for public safety and device development.