United States Department of Transportation
i
Distracted driving and associated crash risks.
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2014-10-01
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[PDF-10.91 MB]
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Abstract:Distracted driving is a dangerous epidemic that has resulted in deaths and injuries in crashes throughout the U.S. Research is
needed to understand whether common cognitive tasks such as texting, handheld cell phone conversation, and front-seat
passenger conversation cause distracted driving and also increase the risk of crashing. The acquisition of the LSU driving
simulator offered opportunity for experimental work to be undertaken in this field of research. Sixty-seven participants from
the LSU community of students and staff members, DOTD staff, and the general public participated in the experimental work.
Participants were placed in simulated environments while being exposed to different tasks (handheld cell phone conversation,
texting, and front-seat passenger conversation) to determine the effect on their driving task. Using Lane Position Variability
and Mean Velocity to respectively represent lateral and longitudinal control of the vehicle, the results suggest that there was
no significant decrease in driver performance during the cell phone conversation. On the contrary, during the texting event, a
significant decrease in driving performance was observed in both lateral and longitudinal control of the vehicle. Front-seat
passenger task produced significant decrease in the lateral control of the vehicle but not in its longitudinal control. The results
also suggest that even though participants maintained longitudinal control of the vehicle during the handheld phone and
passenger conversation drives, they significantly slowed their speeds in the process. However for the texting drive, even
though they significantly slowed down, the participants still exhibited loss of longitudinal control of the vehicle. The findings
of this study have safety and policy implications in the campaign to reduce distracted driving.
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