The effects of information relevancy on driving behavior
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
The effects of information relevancy on driving behavior A simulator study on professional bus drivers Henrik Nilsson1 · Mattias Mullaart2 · Niklas Strand3 · Alexander Eriksson3 Received: 19 November 2019 / Accepted: 20 July 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Bus driving is a complex and cognitively challenging task that places high demands on bus drivers’ working memory. Increasing use of “In-Vehicle Information Systems” leads to driver distraction and is a contributing factor to many road accidents globally, and with systems for tickets, navigation, and timetables, bus drivers are more exposed to this additional workload than other actors in the traffic. This study provides insights into how bus drivers’ driving behavior is affected by auditory traffic information through a driving simulator study at the Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute. A prestudy showed that many bus drivers in Gothenburg experience that a majority of the messages they receive are irrelevant to them. Difference in driving behavior was identified for conditions in which the drivers received messages irrelevant to their route, which might indicate that irrelevancy is an important factor for the workload imposed to the drivers. We hypothesize that irrelevant messages require processing in the visuospatial sketchpad, which might increase workload more than just auditory information processing. The results of this study implies that the routines for traffic communication between traffic controllers and bus drivers should be considerate, as to reduce the number of irrelevant messages that are cognitively loading the bus drivers. Keywords Working memory · Cognitive workload · Auditory secondary task · Driving simulator · Driver distraction · Driving behavior
1 Introduction Bus driving is a complex and cognitively demanding task that requires the ability to simultaneously process information from different sources. Driving a bus in city traffic places high demands on drivers’ working memory (WM) which is constantly loaded from changes in dynamic traffic situations. More frequent use of In-Vehicle Information Systems (IVIS) poses an increased traffic hazard and many traffic accidents today can be attributed to distraction caused * Henrik Nilsson [email protected] Mattias Mullaart [email protected] 1
Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden
2
University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden
3
Swedish National Road an Transport Research Institute (VTI), Gothenburg, Sweden
by these (Yang et al. 2010; Ranney et al. 2000). Both handheld and hands-free phone use can induce cognitive distraction (Recarte and Nunes 2003), and lead to an increased risk of missing traffic signals (Strayer et al. 2003), or adversely affect braking behavior (Treffner and Barrett 2004). Thus, hands-free phone use seems to occupy working memory capacity (Ross et al. 2014). Parnell et al. (2019) argues that the legislations seen in several countries against handheld phone use might create a false sens
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