This report describes research completed using a new approach to study driver distraction among commercial motor vehicle (CMV) operators. Instead of engaging in crash analysis or naturalistic studies, the research team chose to use a motion-based driving simulator to ensure driver immersion and the reduction of simulation adaptation syndrome (SAS), or motion sickness. To keep the study as realistic as possible, researchers conducted a thorough front-end analysis of common complaints and issues related to distracted driving with trucking companies. The study overcame the lack of real-world situations in previous studies by putting CMV operators in environments that are too dangerous for live experimentation. The team chose two common hand-held devices that were the biggest issues for truckers today: touchscreen audio (i.e., motion picture experts group [Mp3]) players, and cell phones. The study required drivers to use these devices at different points on the simulated highway scenario. In addition, some scenarios included external distractions. This experimental design provided accurate results about the use of the two devices both alone and in a variety of combinations. The results of these interactions were measured using simulator data output, trained observers, and an electroencephalography/electrocardiography (EEG/ECG) device. Using EEG/ECGs on CMV operators, combined with motion-based simulators, is an approach that is infrequently used among distracted driving studies and can illustrate the taxing nature of using technology while driving. This approach keeps drivers safe from accidents that occur in the real world and keeps them healthy, because the motion-based simulator helps prevent SAS. Furthermore, this information suggests that if professional drivers are challenged by these distractions, then every other driver in America has similar limitations. Thus, the risks of distracted driving can only be mitigated by a combination of new training, awareness campaigns, active safety systems, and real-time feedback. Distraction was identified by the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) in the late 1970s as a “contributing factor to motor vehicle crashes in reviews of accident causation.” Since then, leading researchers have published hundreds of studies over the past 40 years detailing how a variety of technologies, from windshield wipers, to hands-free wireless cell phones, have affected drivers’ performance through distraction. In 2000, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) expanded on this assertion with updated studies providing advanced statistical and technological analysis. NHTSA went as far as to say that, “Driver inattention is one of the most common causes of traffic crashes.”The report further asserted that it is not just technology that brings about driver distraction but a driver’s “willingness to engage” in any secondary task. The task could be driving related, like adjusting mirrors or using windshield wipers. These distracting tasks can also be non-driving related, like tuning a radio, making a phone call, eating, smoking, etc., all of which divert a driver’s attention.(4) Scholarly articles have attempted to place the number of police-reported crashes caused by driver distraction at around 25 percent of all crashes, with other works putting the number between 35 percent and 50 percent. Academic studies over the past decade have found an abundance of new information about driver distraction. Scholars seeking to understand driver distraction have employed three investigatory methods to illuminate such questions–crash data studies, naturalistic studies, and simulated studies–each with its own benefits and shortfalls. This is not a complete listing or review of all the literature on distracted driving, but rather an overview of the major trends that informed this study’s design. The first investigatory theme used in-depth statistical analysis to look at data (focused on specific distracting tasks) that was collected from crash statistics over several months or years. This theme became more common as computer-based research increased due to the rise in computer efficiency and accessibility to scholars. Scholars have sought to understand how off-task glances are related to in-vehicle stimuli and out-of-vehicle events, along with environmental and vehicle peculiarities that affect drivers of different experience levels and different generations. One of the main challenges for this form of inquiry is that assessing old police reports and crash statistics may provide information that is biased, incomplete, and oversimplified. Stutts, writing for the American Automobile Association (AAA) Foundation Study in 2001, stated: The data limitations are considerable and include potential underreporting of distracted driving in general as well as differential underreporting of specific distracting events. […] Additional research is needed to quantify the frequency and intensity of different driver distractions and to understand how other variables affect distractibility and willingness to engage in distracting behaviours. Naturalistic studies are conducted while drivers go about their daily work routines, requiring lengthy video recordings of real-time drivers. Naturalistic studies took off as video recording devices and electronic storage technology became more affordable, reliable, and user friendly, thereby expanding the situations and locations in which they could be employed. These works are similar to crash report studies because they view raw data over an extended period, searching for statistical relationships between distracted actions and crashes or near-crashes. Naturalistic studies are helpful because they provide researchers with abundant recordings that can be used to illustrate how tasks substantially raise the risk of inducing a crash. However, naturalistic studies suffer from participant tampering, real-world dangers, and the expense of videotaping dozens of CMVs. Some studies placed cameras around numerous long-haul trucks, recording the vehicles for more than a year. One study found that drivers were 23 percent more likely to be involved in a safety-critical event when texting and 6.7 times more likely to be involved in a safety-critical event when reaching for or using an electronic device. A recent investigatory approach that became more common a decade ago uses driving simulators to place participants in realistic yet safe experiments. As with the other approaches, these studies were influenced by the progression of technology. Simulator usage increased as simulation fidelity evolved to reduce SAS or simulation sickness. This created more polished graphics and motion-based designs at an affordable cost and resulted in reduced sickness among participants. Simulator studies take place in the virtual world and use driving simulators to prompt subjects with multiple distractions in an unlimited number of environments, without exposing participants to actual dangerous situations. A major published study using this method served as a model for simulation research on distracted driving. Furthermore, most works involving driver simulators have focused on the viability of using simulators as a tool to view risky behaviour among participants. Some experts focus largely on reproducing and proving generational and experiential differences among driving participants. Other experts focus on the workload imposed on the brain by dual task activity (i.e., cell phone use while driving) that yields interesting data about a person’s ability to multi-task. Results have shown that cell phone conversations are more taxing and distracting for drivers than in-car conversations with passengers. These conclusions were tested against other methods of distraction in comparative studies, such as radios, texting, and drunk driving. Overall, it is clear that simulator-based experiments led scholars to determine that cell phone-induced distracted driving caused drivers to have a less durable visual memory of objects seen on the road. Considering all these advances in research approaches, development of technology, and repeated inquiries into driver distraction were important for this lab’s decision to use simulation devices as its mode of inquiry. Admittedly, some scholarly simulation studies are confined to unrealistic experiments or factors that do not occur in the real world in the same way as they are used in laboratory experiments. Despite this, the team felt that the limitations of crash data analysis and naturalistic studies precluded their use for this study, where motion-based simulators could be cost-effectively and safely employed. (Author/publisher)
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