Driver distraction: Influence of secondary task performance on real-world driving

Due to the rapid development in the fields of electronics and telematics a large variety of new functions and systems have been introduced into automobiles during the past ten years. In order to evaluate the effect of new in-vehicle information and communication systems on driving safety the Advanced-Driver-Attention-Metrics Project (ADAM) aims to develop an efficient method. As criterion of validity for the candidate methods an on-road driving test is used which is described in this paper. In order to determine the effect of secondary tasks on driving performance, thirty-two subjects drove on a 2-lane German highway (Autobahn) and performed several secondary in-vehicle tasks. Dependent variables were glance behaviour, driving performance and several subjective ratings. The total task time and total glance time per task depend on the type of the secondary task but no correlation with driving performance could be found. Thus both, total task time and total glance time cannot be seen as valid surrogate measures of driver distraction.