Citation

Young KL, Salmon PM, Cornelissen M. Safety Sci. 2013; 56: 36-43.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2013, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.ssci.2012.11.004

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Achieving situation awareness is critical to safe and efficient driving. One factor that can limit drivers' situation awareness and thereby affect driving performance is distraction. This study aimed to investigate, under real-world driving conditions, whether and how visual-manual distraction disrupts drivers' situation awareness. Twenty-three participants drove an instrumented vehicle around an urban test route while distracted (i.e., performing a visual detection task) and while not distracted. A network analysis procedure, based on verbal protocols provided by drivers en-route, was used to describe and analyse participants' situation awareness. The findings indicate that engaging in a visually distracting task did not alter the structure of drivers' SA, but did change the content of their awareness. When distracted, drivers tended to place less emphasis on visual scanning element in favour of focussing on elements related to vehicle control tasks. These results have implications for the design and regulation of technologies being introduced into vehicles.


Keywords: Driver distraction;