Multisensory interface design for drivers: past, present and future

A number of recent studies have started to break down the costs associated with using a mobile phone while driving into a number of relatively separable cognitive components.Drivers find it difficult to divide their attention spatially between different locations (i.e. when trying to listen to the side while simultaneously attending visually to the front), something that has often been shown to cause people problems in laboratory settings . Meanwhile,laboratory-based research has shown that participants’ performance in a simulated driving task was significantly impaired when the experimenter simultaneously engaged them in a cognitively-demanding discussion of current affairs. Overall, the research suggests that the more demandingthe auditory task (or conversation), the larger the impairment that will be observed on driving performance. It is interesting to note that the results of a recent meta-analysis of 23 different studies has shown that the costs associated with using a mobile phone while driving are primarily seen in reaction time tasks, with far smaller costs being associated with performance on lane keeping or tracking tasks.Although it is often suggested that using a mobile phone while driving may actually be no more dangerous than either talking to a passenger or listening to the car radio, the evidence now shows that both of these activities appear to result in a significant impairment of several aspects of driving performance. It will be important for future studies to try and move away from the overly-simplified laboratory-based simulated driving tests that have characterised much of the research conducted to date, to more realistic driving simulator or on-road studies. (A)