From October, 1999 to February, 2000 the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia (ICBC) conducted closed-course driving experiments at Boundary Bay Airport (the Pacific Education Centre site) intended to test the impact of in-vehicle telephone use on driving performance. Previous studies reported in the literature (notably Redelmeier and Tibshirani, 1997) have suggested a link between in-vehicle telephone use and driving safety, not just in terms of the physical task of operating the phone but – most importantly – in relation to the competing cognitive requirements of driving and conversing. With the recent proliferation of cell phones and their use by drivers to transform cars into secondary work environments, a legitimate concern has been raised as to the potential impact on crash risk due to distraction from the driving task. Research in the area of attention - switching has shown that task complexity plays a key role (Ranney et al, 2000; Lee et al, 2000). If the primary task (e.g. related to driving) is not very complex, then a certain amount of attention can safely be diverted to a secondary cognitive task (such as listening and responding to messages) without significantly impairing performance in the primary. For example, Noy et al (1999) found no effect of cell phone use on driver ability to maintain lateral position under normal traffic conditions. But what about situations requiring critical choices? Some traffic situations require fairly complex and quick decision-making on the part of the drivers (making left turns through gaps in on-coming vehicle streams, for example). How might performance in such situations be affected by talking on a cell phone, and could crash risk increase as a result? (Author/publisher)
Abstract