Phoning while driving is a convenience which is well appreciated by business men, managers, craftsmen, etc.. This allows them to save time and their vehicule has changed in a second office. Nevertheless, phoning while driving represents a dual task which contributes to increasing driver's mental workload. Does this mental increase reach such a level that drivers are led to modify their strategies in terms of speed, trajectory keeping, visual exploration, and reaction time ? When receiving a call, does the driver "pick up" the call, dropping up all other activities immediately, as he often does in their office or at home ? In order to answer these questions, experimentations were carried out by LESCO on a driving simulator and under real conditions with 40 subjects including 20 car phone users. Subjective evaluations (self evaluation of mental workload index derived from NASA.TLX and questionnaires) and objective evaluations (speed, trajectory keeping, visual exploration and reaction time) show that the act of phoning while driving leads to a degradation of some of driver's performances.
Samenvatting