Legislators, journalists, and researchers alike have recently directed a great deal of attention to the effects of cellular telephone ("cell phone") use on driver behaviour and performance. This paper demonstrates how cognitive modelling can aid in understanding these effects by predicting the impact of cell-phone dialling in a naturalistic driving task. We developed models of four methods of cell-phone dialling and integrated these models with an existing driver model of steering and speed control. By running this integrated model, we generated a priori predictions for how each dialling method affects the accuracy of steering and speed control with respect to an accelerating and braking lead vehicle. The model predicted that the largest effects on driver performance arose for dialling methods with high visual demand rather than methods with long dialling times. We validated several of the model's predictions with an empirical study in a fixed-based driving simulator. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting