Empirical Evaluation on Driving Simulator of Effect of Distractions Inside and Outside the Vehicle on Drivers' Eye Behavior

Drivers between the ages of 16 and 17 who have held their intermediate license for six months or less are at a greatly elevated risk of crashing. Distraction is thought to be a major cause of this increased risk. Recent naturalistic and field studies of more experienced, older teen drivers (18 and 19) indicate that they are more likely to glance away from the forward roadway for an extended period of time than more experienced drivers. However, no studies have directly compared the extended glance durations away from the forward roadway of newly-licensed and older drivers when performing distracting tasks inside and outside of the vehicle. In order to understand the effect that in-vehicle and outside-the-vehicle distractions have on the glance durations away from the forward roadway of newly-licensed drivers, both newly-licensed and experienced drivers were asked to navigate a virtual roadway and at various points perform tasks inside and outside the vehicle. All drivers' eye movements were tracked. Several measures indicated that the newly-licensed drivers looked away from the road for extended periods of time much more than the experienced drivers when performing the in-vehicle tasks. For example, in 55% of the in-vehicle tasks, the newly-licensed drivers looked away at least once for more than two seconds, whereas the experienced drivers did so in only 23% of such tasks. However, there was virtually no difference between the newly-licensed and experienced drivers on this and other measures during the outside-the-vehicle tasks.

• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Chan, Elsa
  • Pradhan, Anuj K
  • Knodler Jr, Michael A
  • Pollatsek, Alexander
  • Fisher, Donald L
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 87th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2008-1-13 to 2008-1-17
• Date: 2008

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: DVD
• Features: Figures; References;
• Pagination: 15p
• Monograph Title: TRB 87th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers DVD

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Distraction; Drivers; Driving simulators; Eye movements; Safety; Teenage drivers
• Uncontrolled Terms: New drivers
• Subject Areas: Highways; Safety and Human Factors;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01089738
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 08-2910
• Files: TRIS, TRB
• Created Date: Mar 12 2008 10:21AM