Effects of Secondary Tasks on Vehicle Speed and Distance during Driving and Brake Response Time during Unexpected Situation

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of the secondary tasks such as sending text message(STM) and searching navigation(SN) on vehicle speed and distance during driving and brake response time during unexpected situation using a driving simulator. The participants included 19 college students; 9 males aged 25.2±1.0 with 2.4±2.0years of driving experiences and 10 females aged 21.4±0.5 with 1.3±0.5years of driving experiences. All subjects were instructed to keep a certain distance(30m) from the car ahead and a constant speed(100㎞/h). Average speed and average following distance were measured during 10 seconds before unexpected situation. Also, brake response time after unexpected situation was measured. Average speed was more decreased and average following distance was more increased during the driving with secondary tasks than driving only. Male maintained the assigned speed and distance better than female. The brake response time was faster during driving only than the driving with secondary tasks. And the brake response time of male was shorter than that of female.