In the frame of COST Action 352 targeting the Influence of Modern In-vehicle Information System on Road Safety Requirements, a synthesis of existing knowledge has been developed to set up common methodological basis with the purpose to co-ordinate future researches in this field across the European region. Based on this overview, the paper outlines some basic motivational and attitudinal aspects manifested as a constant and significant driving tendency in connection with IVIS use. Since one of the fundamental researches requirements it to operationalize the impact by means of behavioural indicators, two questionnaires will be presented to evaluate the impact of those aspects on safety driving. Despite the fact that a huge body of researches on IVIS has been produced in last years, there are many difficulties to compare different results because of the heterogeneous theoretical and methodological assumptions, often underestimating the effect of drivers features and motives. Among those researches studying the interactions with IVIS according to drivers’ characteristics, the main concern of researchers has been given on performance aspects when trying to answer the main research question - if the interactions with IVIS might help drivers to cope with their limitations due to inexperience or impairment and if the interaction with IVIS while driving might create new, additional risks. However, drivers’ capabilities and skills to drive while using IVIS do not necessarily predict accident involvement, because it is the motivational factor which determines how drivers use their skills (Lajunen and Summala, 1995). For that reason there is an increasing conviction that the general attitudes toward safety is an important determinant of driving behaviour when evaluating the effect of IVIS use on crash risk; riskier drivers usually accept higher level and amount of hazards, which can lead toward more inappropriate way of IVIS use. This effect has been observed for example regarding the use of cell phones (Poyesti et al. 2005; Hahn and Prieger, 2004), while the impact of new technologies supporting driving tasks (navigation system, weather information) on actual driving behaviour from a safety perspective is still mostly unexplored. Therefore it could be of fundamental importance to individuate a baseline of accident risk for every single driver discriminating him/her on a range from very careless to extremely safe drivers. For this purpose The Driving Skill Inventory (DSI - Lajunen and Summala, 1995) evaluating driver orientation on both safety and skilful driving (self image as a driver) will be presented as an reliable and appropriate tool to identify better the impact on driving with IVIS devices. In other words the control of this variable in experiments might reveal that the group of safer drivers can react in different way on the same typology of IVIS than risky group of drivers, for example regarding to headways distance, speeding, lateral and longitudinal control etc). The inclusion of driver self image into the methodological design could bring a new understanding of the complex interactions between driver (socio-demographic data, motivation, performance capabilities) and driving environment (e.g. vehicle characteristics, road infrastructure, other road users). Since safety use of IVIS is connected also to the driver dexterity as well as the willingness to use IVIS, some basic assumptions of Cognitive Ergonomic, stating that the use is influenced also by the way how the subject represents her/his interaction with new technologies, will be outlined. The Questionnaire on the Representations of new Technologies in vehicle (QRT, modified version of Antonietti’s questionnaire, 2006) developed to evaluate driver’s mental representations regarding IVIS can be a new tool to control this variable in the experiments. In fact it is foreseen that positive representations can diminish cognitive workload while enhancing the willingness to use them as well as the learning process and vice versa. (Author/publisher) This publication may be accessed by Internet users at: http://www.ictct.org/workshop.php?workshop_nr=25
Abstract