Driver Distraction and Inattention

Advances in Research and Countermeasures, Volume 1

John D. Lee, Michael A. Regan, Michael A. Regan

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317147879
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Automotive Transportation & Engineering
• Index: Technology & Engineering

It is estimated that, in the United States, around 20 percent of all Police-reported road crashes involve driver distraction as a contributing factor. This figure increases if other forms of inattention are considered. Evidence (reviewed in this volume) suggests that the situation is similar in other countries and that driver distraction and inattention are even more dangerous as contributing factors in crashes than drug and alcohol intoxication. Having a solid evidence-base from which to develop injury countermeasures is a cornerstone of road-safety management. This book adds to the accumulating evidence-base on driver distraction and inattention. With 24 chapters by 52 authors from more than 10 countries, it provides important new perspectives on the definition and meaning of driver distraction and inattention, the mechanisms that characterize them, the measurement of their effects, strategies for mitigating their effects, and recommendations for further research. The goal of this book is to inspire further research and countermeasure development to prevent and mitigate the potentially adverse effects of driver distraction and driver inattention, and, in doing so, to save lives.

PART I
Introduction

Chapter 1

Introduction

Michael A. Regan¹ and John D. Lee²

¹Ttransport and Road Safety (TARS) Research, School of Aviation,
University of New South Wales, Australia
²Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA

Driver distraction, or “distracted driving” as it is sometimes called, has become an important issue on road safety agendas in many countries around the world. Recent evidence from the USA suggests that driver distraction and driver inattention are more important than some other factors often thought to be critical in crash causation, such as fatigue, drug ingestion and alcohol intoxication (see Chapter 8).

During the past five years there has been a surge in interest and research on the topics of driver distraction and driver inattention, which has seen the publication of two books on driver distraction (Regan et al. 2009, Rupp 2011), the staging of two international conferences on driver distraction and inattention (Regan and Victor 2009, 2011), the convening in the USA, by the US Secretary of Transportation, Ray LaHood, of two national summits on distracted driving (Department of Transportation 2009, 2010), and the convening of a US-European expert “Focus Group” charged with resolving some fundamental issues relating to the definition and characterisation of driver distraction and inattention, and with identifying key research issues (Engstrom et al. 2010). A search of eight major research databases, undertaken by the Governors Highway Safety Association for a recent review of distracted driving (GHSA 2011), identified more than 350 scientific papers on driver-distraction-related issues that were published between 2000 and 2010. The same cannot be said about driver inattention; the body of literature on this topic, although expanding, is relatively small.

Despite these important initiatives, there remains little agreement about some fundamental issues, such as what driver distraction and inattention really mean and how they relate to each other (Regan et al. 2011), what is their relative impact on driving performance and safety, how best to manage them as road safety issues and how best to evaluate those initiatives that have been implemented to mitigate their effects.

These gaps in our understanding become even more important when considering the social and technological context of driving. Paralleling the surge in interest in distraction has been a surge in the rollout of new technology. The last decade has seen fundamental changes in social and communication technology that directly affect driving and driver distraction: the advent of Facebook (in 2004), Twitter (in 2006), the iPhone (in 2007), third-party applications (apps) for the iPhone increasing to over 500,000 in 2012 from none in 2008, and so on. Texting has in many countries gone from being a novelty activity to increasingly displacing voice communications.

These and other emerging communication, social network and entertainment facilities have begun to enter the car through smartphones. Recently, car companies have begun to integrate some of this technology directly into the car through “apps” that mimic much of the functionality of the smartphone applications. These technological changes are so profound, they represent more than just new types of distraction for designers and policy makers to consider; they are altering the social landscape.

Not only are changes in technology introducing new distractions, but the car is changing in ways that may fundamentally change the role of the driver. Some of these changes are subtle, such as adaptive cruise control, which not only allows the driver to maintain a fixed speed on the open road, but also senses the presence of a car ahead and maintains a fixed headway when slower-moving cars are encountered. More important are collision warning and other technologies that alert drivers to potential hazards. Such technologies might mitigate distraction by helping distracted drivers to direct their attention back to the road. However, such technologies also have the potential to misdirect attention to events the car thinks are important, but which might not be the most critical at the time. More generally, vehicle automation changes the role of the driver from active controller to monitor, radically altering what it means to be an “attentive driver”.

The advances in our understanding of driver distraction and driver inattention, together with the rapidly changing socio-technical landscape, make it important to create an up-to-date compilation of research on these topics. The aim of this book, the first in the series, is to bring the reader up to date on some recent developments in research on driver distraction and driver inattention, and on current thinking about how to manage them effectively as road safety issues. Several of the chapters in the book derive from papers presented at the First International Conference on Driver Distraction and Inattention, held in Gothenburg, Sweden, between 28 and 29 September 2009 (see www.chalmers.se/safer/driverdistraction-en). These papers, suitably expanded and updated, were selected by the editors for inclusion in the book because of the new and novel perspectives they bring to the field. The remaining chapters were solicited separately to complement these chapters.

Having a solid evidence base from which to develop injury countermeasures is a cornerstone of effective road safety management. This book adds to the accumulating evidence base on driver distraction and inattention. With contributions from around 50 authors from more than ten countries, it provides new perspectives on the meaning of driver distraction and inattention, the mechanisms that characterize and give rise to them, the measurement of their effects, strategies for mitigating their effects and recommendations for further research.

The book is divided into eight parts. Part 1 introduces the reader to the book. Part 2, containing four chapters, addresses issues of theory, philosophy and definition in characterising and distinguishing between driver distraction and inattention. In Part 3, two chapters are presented which aim to improve the understanding of driver control of visual and attentional processes. Part 4 contains five chapters that review and analyse recent data on the role of driver distraction and inattention as contributing factors in crashes and critical events, for cars and heavy commercial vehicles. Two further chapters, deriving from submissions to a recent French government inquiry on driver distraction from mobile phone use, provide state-of-the-art reviews of what is known about the impact of mobile phone use on crash risk, and about drivers’ subjective perceptions of risk linked to mobile phone use while driving. Part 5 contains two chapters that focus on the measurement of driver distraction and inattention. The first describes the development and validation of a driver distraction impact assessment test, and the second describes the use of oculometric measures as an index of clinical causes of driver drowsiness and inattention. In Part 6, three chapters explore the effects of driver distraction on driving performance. The six chapters in Part 7 focus on countermeasures for mitigating the effects of driver distraction and inattention. Finally, in Part 8, some general themes and conclusions are drawn from the material presented in the book.

This book, and those that follow in the series, can be considered companion volumes to an earlier book on driver distraction (Regan et al. 2009). Other important resources exist for those wanting to be brought up to date on recent developments in the field. These include the downloadable peer-reviewed papers of the First and Second International Conferences on Driver Distraction and Inattention (www.chalmers.se/safer/driverdistraction-en; www.chalmers.se/ddi2011), the book by Rupp (2011) on performance metrics for the measurement of driver distraction, some recent, more general, reviews of the literature on driver distraction (e.g., Angell and Lee 2011, GHSA 2011, Kircher et al., Robertson 2011), and several policy documents (e.g., NHTSA 2010, TRB 2011, WHO 2011).

It is hoped that the material contained in this book will inspire further research and countermeasure development to prevent and mitigate the potentially adverse effects of driver distraction and driver inattention.

References

Angell, L.S. and Lee, J.D. (eds) 2011. Science and technology of driver distraction - special issue. Ergonomics in Design: 19 (4).

Craft, R.H. and Preslopsky, B. 2012. Driver distraction and inattention: Top crash causes in the United States. In Driver Distraction and Inattention: Advances in Research and Countermeasures, M.A. Regan, J.D. Lee and T.W. Victor (eds), Farnham, UK: Ashgate, Chapter 8.

Department of Transportation 2009. Department of Transportation distracted driving summit [online]. Available at http://www.tvworldwide.com/events/rita/090830 [accessed: 29 April 2012].

Department of Transportation 2010. Department of Transportation distracted driving summit [online]. Available at http://www.c-spanarchives.org/program/ID/233457&start=2563&end=2887 [accessed: 29 April 2012].

Engstrom, J., Binder, S. and Monk, C. 2010. Expert focus group on driver distraction: Definition and research needs [online]. Available at http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/esafety/doc/intl_coop/us/eg_driver_distract.pdf [accessed: 29 April 2012].

GHSA 2011. Distracted Driving: What Research Shows and What States Can Do. Washington, DC: Governors Highway Safety Association.

Kircher, K, Patten, C. and Ahlstrom, C. 2011. Mobile Telephones and Other Communication Devices and their Impact on Traffic Safety. Linkoping, Sweden: VTI.

NHTSA 2010. Overview of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration S Driver Distraction Program. Washington, DC: NHTSA.

Regan, M.A. and Victor, T. (eds) 2009. Electronic Proceedings of the First International Conference on Driver Distraction and Inattention, Gothenburg, Sweden, 28-29 September 2009 (www.chalmers.se/safer/driverdistraction-en).

Regan, M.A. and Victor, T. (eds) 2011. Electronic Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Driver Distraction and Inattention, Gothenburg, Sweden, 5-7 September 2011 (http://www.chalmers.se/safer/ddi2011-en/).

Regan, M.A., Lee, J.D. and Young, K.L. (eds) 2009. Driver Distraction: Theory, Effects and Mitigation. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.

Regan, M.A., Hallet, C. and Gordon, C. 2011. Driver distraction and driver inattention: Definition, relationship, and taxonomy. Accident Analysis and Prevention, 43: 1771-81.

Robertson, R. 2011. Distracted Driving: So What’s the Big Picture? Ottawa, ON: Traffic Safety Research Foundation.

Rupp, G.L. 2011. Performance Metrics for Assessing Driver Distraction: The Quest for Improved Road Safety. Warrendale, PA: SAE International.

TRB 2011. Distracted Driving Countermeasures for Commercial Vehicles: A Synthesis of Safety Practice. Washington, DC: Transportation research Board.

WHO 2011. Mobile Phone Use: A Growing Problem of Driver Distraction. Geneva: World Health Organisation.

PART II
Distraction and Inattention -Theory, Philosophy and Definition

Chapter 2

Driven to Distraction and Back Again

Peter A. Hancock

University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida, USA

Abstract

Since transportation serves predominantly to support other human goals than merely moving from one location to another, modern-day driving is itself the primary source of distraction. Further, given that contemporary vehicle control is a satisficed and not saturating demand, drivers typically have residual attention left over to direct toward these superordinate goals during drive time. This they do (and indeed are societally encouraged to do) via the plentiful technologies now available to them. When circumstances demand the full attention of the driver it is not there and we see the increasing frequency of adverse collisions. I therefore use physical principles (Boyle’s law and Maxwell’s demon) to understand the foundation of these collisions and distraction effects. I conclude that to choreograph the dance of driving we need to build “condoms for cars”. That is, we need to build technologically supported buffer zones around each vehicle. To achieve this we will need to create much more sophisticated vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications than currently exist.

Preamble

Today it seems that one cannot escape the issue of driver distraction.¹ Our various media are as redolent with discussions of it as our roadways are themselves crowded with it (e.g., Richtel, 2009a, b). Each and every time a new technology or new communications medium literally comes to hand, the issue once again leaps to the forefront of social attention. The Internet is awash with these reports concerning the issue of driver distraction, risk and inattention. Warnings of risk are sadly matched by equal coverage of tragic crashes and resultant fatalities and injuries.² Crashes are themselves followed by the almost inevitable sequence of blame and a spectrum of punishment.³ The subsequent social reaction is one of an almost knee-jerk response of moral outrage and furious but sadly unproductive calls for personal retribution.⁴ Other than the cycle of ever greater numbers and sources of distraction, followed by increasing numbers of individual failures and the resultant calls to punish the putative “bad apples”, can we provide a more constructive and effective response to this still burgeoning issue? The spotlight...