Driver Engagement in Notifications

Smartwatches and other wearables are being developed for the consumer market and will most likely be used by drivers, but there is little investigation into their influence on driver behaviour. Smartwatches are able to provide certain smartphone functionalities. For example, they can provide notifications, such as text mes-sages. Because watches are always “on-hand”, drivers may find it easier and be more compelled to interact with them in comparison to smartphones. We conducted an exploratory driving simulator study to compare a smartwatch and a smartphone in terms of time to engagement with the device and drivers’ glance patterns. The results show that participants (n=6) chose to engage with the smartwatch faster than with the smartphone, but took longer to read notifications. The smartwatch also led to a larger number of glances greater than 2 seconds than the smartphone. Further investigation of the effects on driving performance is required.