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Title:

Study of the Impact of Hand-Held and Hands-Free Cell Phone Texting on Driving Performance

Accession Number:

01588026

Record Type:

Component

Abstract:

In an increasingly mobile era, the wide availability of technology for texting and the prevalence of hands-free form have introduced a new safety concern for drivers. To assess this concern, this study investigated the impact of hands-free and hand-held texting on drivers’ performance through a virtual-reality driving simulator experiment. A questionnaire was first deployed online to gain an understanding of drivers’ text driving experiences as well as their demographic information. The results from 232 people revealed that the majority of drivers are aware of the associated risks with texting while driving. However, more than one-third of them still frequently send or read text messages while driving. Through the use of a virtual-reality driving simulator, this study examined drivers’ driving performance while they were engaged in some forms of text driving under different challenging traffic conditions. Through a blocked factorial experiment, drivers would either read a text message or respond to it with two levels of text complexity while using either hand-held or hands-free texting method. Forty eight test subjects with balanced gender and age groups were recruited to participate in all combinations of the three factors. Subjects used their own personal smartphones in the hand-held section and a computerized voice enabled audio system in the hands-free section. Their driving performance was assessed based on the number of driving violations observed in each scenario. Conclusions regarding the impacts of different forms of texting, text complexity, and response mode on drivers driving performance were drawn.

Supplemental Notes:

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AND10 Standing Committee on Vehicle User Characteristics.

Monograph Accession #:

01584066

Report/Paper Numbers:

16-3617

Language:

English

Corporate Authors:

Transportation Research Board

500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001 United States

Authors:

Motamedi, S
Wang, J H

Pagination:

13p

Publication Date:

2016

Conference:

Transportation Research Board 95th Annual Meeting

Location: Washington DC, United States
Date: 2016-1-10 to 2016-1-14
Sponsors: Transportation Research Board

Media Type:

Digital/other

Features:

Figures; Photos; References; Tables

Subject Areas:

Highways; Safety and Human Factors; I83: Accidents and the Human Factor

Source Data:

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2016 Paper #16-3617

Files:

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Created Date:

Jan 12 2016 5:34PM