DRIVER DISTRACTION ASSOCIATED WITH MOBILE PHONE TACTILE TASKS: A DRIVING SIMULATOR-BASED STUDY

Abstract

The mobile phone is an extremely beneficial tool for humanity, capable of performing a multitude of functions beyond the mere transmission and reception of telephone communications. Regrettably, it has the capacity to cause significant distractions for drivers in numerous ways. The aim of the study is to measure the distraction in terms of participants’ response time for different tactile tasks and driving scenarios. In this research, 54 participants executed several secondary tasks (i.e., tactile tasks) while simultaneously engaging in the DRT throughout a simulated driving environment. For the comparison of driving scenarios, three scenarios were used: free flow (40 km/h) with medium traffic volume, free flow (40 km/h) without traffic and traffic jams. For different tactile tasks, apart from the 2-character number, other tactile tasks such as 5, 9, 14, and 20 number of characters were also assessed. The study findings indicated that participants responded to lesser stimuli when dealing with more difficult tactile tasks. Besides, the results found that drivers were more distracted when dealing with more demanding tasks of using mobile phones (i.e., tactile tasks) as compared to baseline. In addition, participants attended the worst in terms of stimuli and higher response time in the traffic jam scenario as compared to other scenarios. Besides, the study discovered that the novice drivers’ group was identified to respond at a significantly faster rate than the experienced drivers’ group. In terms of gender, male drivers were generally faster in terms of response time than female drivers, with no significant differences.