Investigating the Impact of In-Car Communication on Law Enforcement Officer Patrol Performance in an Advanced Driving Simulator

Law enforcement officers must process and respond to a variety of information sources to effectively and safely patrol the environment. These demands on attention, such as dispatch radio calls, are necessary for the officer to perform the patrol and thus cannot be eliminated without compromising the officer’s effectiveness. This project evaluated law enforcement officers’ driving, visual attention, and situation awareness during patrol driving. Conditions varied to determine the impact of information presentation format on officers’ ability to execute patrols. In addition, the authors were interested in how the growing number of in-vehicle technologies may be able to provide additional support to the officer and reduce the impact of information overload. Fourteen municipal law enforcement officers, recruited from local law enforcement agencies, performed patrols using a driving simulator under general patrol conditions: baseline patrol driving, patrol driving with radio calls, and patrol driving with radio calls and an in-car data terminal. Analysis of variance plus post-hoc planned comparisons were used to evaluate the impact of information format and language structure on driving behavior, visual attention, and situation awareness measures. The results indicate that when ten-codes are paired with a display echoing communication with dispatch or when natural language is used without such a display, accuracy on a test of situation awareness was similar to a baseline condition without distraction. This provides evidence that police departments should be made more aware of how certain technologies and practices interact.

• Record URL:
  • https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/243938.pdf
• 
• Corporate Authors:

  Mississippi State University, Mississippi State

  Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems
  Mississippi State, MS  United States  39762

  Department of Justice

  950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20530-0001
• Authors:
  • Williams, Carrick
  • Carruth, Daniel
  • Garrison, Teena
  • McGinley, John
• Publication Date: 2013-10

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Edition: Final Report
• Features: Appendices; Figures; Photos; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 59p

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Alertness; Distraction; Driver information systems; Driver performance; Driving simulators; Information display systems; Law enforcement personnel; Radio equipment
• Subject Areas: Highways; Safety and Human Factors; Vehicles and Equipment; I83: Accidents and the Human Factor; I91: Vehicle Design and Safety;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01516588
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 243938
• Contract Numbers: 2010-DJ-BX-2017
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Feb 28 2014 1:32PM