Impact of information bandwidth of in-vehicle technologies on young drivers' attention maintenance performance: A Driving simulator study

Abstract

Previous research indicates that young novice drivers' ability to maintain their attention on the forward roadway during driving is poorer than experienced drivers, leading to more frequent excessively long off-road glances that elevate the risk of crashes. This study directly manipulated information bandwidth of an in-vehicle monitor and asked young drivers to perform the number judgment task during simulated driving. Results show that the drivers produced more number of off-road glances and longer summed excess glance durations in 1.5-second threshold when the in-vehicle task imposed greater information processing demand. The crash risk estimated from the obtained summed excess glance durations is 3.2 times higher when the information processing demand was high than low using the 1.5-second threshold, and 4.3 times higher using the 2.0-second threshold. In practice, designers of in-vehicle technologies should consider information-processing demands of in-vehicle tasks that the technologies require in order to minimize the frequency of excessively long off-road glances during driving