01626392

Component

To reduce the number of distraction related crashes, it is important to understand how secondary tasks affect driver behavior. While much can be learned from observational approaches, controlled experimental studies will play a crucial role in understanding distraction. To that end, it is important that drivers be motivated to engage with secondary tasks in experimental studies, as they would in the real world. Task-contingent incentives, where drivers are compensated at least in part for secondary task performance or engagement, have frequently been used to increase motivation to engage in secondary tasks during driving studies. However, little research has actually tested whether such incentives actually alter secondary task engagement. This study compared two task-based incentive methods with a baseline condition to examine the effects of incentives on secondary task engagement in a high-fidelity driving simulator. There was no evidence to suggest that drivers engaged differently with the secondary task in the incentive conditions. While this study explored only a subset of possible incentive methods, the results cast doubt onto the efficacy of using incentives to increase secondary task engagement in the context of driving experiments.

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

01618707

17-05810

English

17p

2017

Transportation Research Board 96th Annual Meeting

Digital/other

Figures; Photos; References (19) ; Tables

Behavior; Distraction; Driving simulators; Motivation; Workload

Highways; Safety and Human Factors

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2017 Paper #17-05810

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Dec 8 2016 12:20PM