Individual differences and in-vehicle distraction while driving: A test track study and psychometric evaluation

The influence of individual differences on driver distraction was examined in this study. Sixteen (16) test participants were trained on destination entry procedures with four commercially available route guidance systems, as well as the dialing task on a commercially available wireless cellular telephone and on manually tuning an after-market car radio. The participants then drove an instrumented vehicle at approximately 45 mph on a 7.5 mile oval test track with very light traffic while concurrently engaging in various tasks with these devices. In-vehicle task completion time, average glance duration away from the road ahead, number of glances away from the road ahead, and number of lane exceedences were recorded. The participants were later given an automated battery of temporal visual perception and cognitive tasks. Performance on the test battery was then correlated to performance on the test track measures to determine the extent to which individual driver differences could account for observed performance differences. Analysis of these elementary test scores as predictors show low but consistent patterns of correlation to test-track performance measures.