Drivers' visual behavior when using handheld and hands-free cell phones.

Area of Science:

• Transportation Safety
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Cognitive Psychology

Background:

• Driver distraction is a major safety concern.
• Cell phone use while driving, encompassing handheld (HH), portable hands-free (PHF), and integrated hands-free (IHF) systems, presents various visual and cognitive demands.
• Understanding the specific visual behavior impacts of different cell phone interaction types is crucial for policy development.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate driver distraction by examining how HH, PHF, and IHF cell phone use affects drivers' visual behavior.
• To quantify the total eyes-off-road time (TEORT) associated with different cell phone subtasks while driving.

Main Methods:

• A naturalistic driving study involving 204 participants over approximately 31 days.
• Video and sensor data collection to capture driving behavior and cell phone interactions.
• Analysis of 1564 cell phone calls and 844 text messages, comparing TEORT during cell phone use against baseline driving periods.

Main Results:

• Visual-manual subtasks on HH, PHF, and IHF phones significantly increased mean percent TEORT.
• Conversing on HH phones significantly decreased TEORT, suggesting more frequent glances at the road.
• No significant TEORT differences were observed for conversations on PHF or IHF phones.
• Mean TEORT durations for visual-manual tasks were significantly longer for HH phones compared to PHF or IHF phones.

Conclusions:

• The findings reinforce the need to distinguish between handheld and hands-free cell phone use in transportation distraction policies.
• Different types of cell phone interactions (conversational vs. visual-manual) and device integration (HH vs. PHF vs. IHF) have distinct impacts on driver visual behavior.
• This research provides empirical evidence to inform regulations and public awareness campaigns regarding cell phone use while driving.