Drivers between the ages of 16 and 17 who have held their intermediate license for six months or less are at a greatly elevated risk of crashing. Distraction is thought to be a major cause of this increased risk. Recentnaturalistic and field studies of more experienced, older teen drivers (18 and 19) indicate that they are more likely to glance away from the forward roadway for an extended period of time than more experienced drivers. However, no studies have directly compared the extended glance durations away from the forward roadway of newly-licensed and older drivers when performing distracting tasks inside and outside of the vehicle. In order to understand the effect that in-vehicle and outside-the-vehicle distractions have on the glance durations away from the forward roadway of newly-licensed drivers, both newly-licensed and experienced drivers were asked to navigate a virtual roadway and at various points perform tasks inside and outside the vehicle. All drivers' eye movements were tracked. Several measures indicated that the newly-licensed drivers looked away from the road for extended periods of time much more than the experienced drivers when performing the in-vehicle tasks. For example, in 55% of the in-vehicle tasks, the newly-licensed drivers looked away at least once for more than two seconds, whereas the experienced drivers did so in only 23% of such tasks. However, there was virtually no difference between the newly-licensed and experienced drivers on this and other measures during the outside-the-vehicle tasks.
Abstract