1. In-Vehicle Driver Distractions & Eye Movements
Presented by: Briana Nelson Kraayenbrink

2. What is driver distraction? (NHTSA, 2000)
Any activity (technology or non-technology related) that takes a driver’s attention away from the task of driving
Any distraction has the potential to cause or contribute to a crash
Driver distraction is one of the most common causes of traffic crashes
Approximately 25% of police reported crashes

3. What is driver distraction? (NHTSA, 2000)
Four distinct categories:
Visual distraction
Auditory distraction
Biomechanical distraction
Cognitive distraction
Many distracting activities can be more than one of these categories

4. Previous Research
Cell Phones
Hands-free
Navigation Guidance Systems

5. Visual Distraction Research
Antin, Dingus, Hulse, & Wierwille (1990) found that drivers spent 80% of their time looking at the road ahead when not engaged in distracting activities
Distracting events reduced amount of time looking at forward headway and increased the glance durations to mirrors, windows, and inside the truck

6. Visual Distraction Research
Glance duration & frequency to an in-vehicle display are dependent upon the display characteristics (e.g., character size, info density, complexity of task)
Compared to large displays & controls, small displays and controls can produce a 20% increase in mean glance duration (Rockwell, 1998)
More glances are required with manual than speech task
Radio/CD task took three 1s glances, dialing phone # required twelve 1s glances (Faerber, Faerber, & Meier-Arendt, 1999)

7. Visual Distraction Research
ETAK study (Wierwille, Dingus & colleagues, 87-88)
Compared visual attention demand for the navigation system tasks (with ETAK) and conventional tasks (tuning radio)
On road studies in an instrumented 1985 Cadillac DeVille fitted with ETAK navigator

8. ETAK Studies

9. ETAK Studies
Eye glances to in-vehicle instruments, mirrors, etc. were low-frequency occurrences and accounted for 4-6% of glances
Percentage of glances to navigation system ranged from 7-33%.
Percentage of glances to forward, left, and right roadway ranged from 62-92%

10. Visual Distraction Research
Design Guidelines
Zwahlen, Adams, and DeBald (1998)

11. Visual Distraction Research
Design Guidelines
European Statement of Principles on Human Machine Interface
JAMA (2000) Guidelines
Apply to OEM and after-market
The IVIS Demand
HF Design Guidelines for ATIS and CVO
SAE J2364 (the 15-second rule)
Statement of Principles by the Alliance of Auto Manufacturers
CAMP Driver Workload Metrics Project

12. Route Navigation Studies-UMTRI Tech Report
UMTRI Tech Report on Visual and Task Demands of Driver Info Systems
Purpose
Provide background material for the development of SAE J2364
Provide info to enhance the safety and usability of driver interfaces for navigation systems

13. Route Navigation Studies-UMTRI Tech Report
What is the relationship between visual demand and crashes?
Time spent looking inside the vehicle is not spent looking at the road for potential crash-inducing hazards.

14. Route Navigation Studies-UMTRI Tech Report
How long does destination input and retrieval take?
With manual controls and visual displays, destination entry takes 1 – 2.5 minutes
Point of interest entry takes 10% longer than street address or intersection methods
Destination retrieval takes about 10s depending on the address and database
The worst interface for a task takes twice as long to use as the best

15. Route Navigation Studies-UMTRI Tech Report
How long do drivers prefer to look in a vehicle at an object?
From their experience, drivers have a sense of how long is too long and how frequent is too frequent
Experimental approach is for drivers to look at nonattention demanding target for as long as they feel safe/comfortable to do so
Also addressed by having drivers rate how safe/comfortable/secure they felt after completing various tasks
Suggestions have been made that total glance times should not exceed 5-10s for drivers to feel safe

16. Route Navigation Studies-UMTRI Tech Report
How much time do drivers spend looking at in-vehicle controls and displays?
Mean glance durations typically do not exceed 1.2 – 1.5s
But how many times are they glancing over to look at the display in a certain time window??

17. SAfety VEhicles using adaptive Interface Technology (SAVE-IT)
VNTSC awarded contract to Delphi Electronics & Safety to develop, demonstrate, and evaluate the potential safety benefits of adaptive interface technologies that manage the info from various in-vehicle systems based on real-time monitoring of the roadway conditions and the driver’s capabilities
SAVE-IT is designed to mitigate distraction with effective countermeasures and enhance the effectiveness of safety warning systems.
Comprehensive research team includes researchers from U of IA, UMTRI, GM, Ford, and Seeing Machines

18. SAVE-IT Visual Distraction Research
Experiment
14 subjects (35-53 y.o.)
Delphi driving simulator using FaceLab eye tracking system
NASA-TLX used to measure workload and perceived task difficulty
IVs: road type, amount of visual distraction (reading task), display eccentricity

19. SAVE-IT Visual Distraction Research
Delphi Driving Simulator

20. SAVE-IT Visual Distraction Research
Results
As the visual distraction level increased, the TLX score increased.
TLX score also increased as display eccentricity increased

21. SAVE-IT Visual Distraction Research

22. SAVE-IT Visual Distraction Research
Recommendations for future research
Repeat experiments in NADS, naturalistic on-road driving to provide more generalizable results
Actually doing this in phase 2 of SAVE-IT

23. Future Research Recommendations
Non-intrusive, automatic, and reliable eye tracking systems should be used to examine driver’s visual behavior and assess the level of distraction.
Could even use a few video cameras to determine where individuals are looking

24. Precision & Accuracy of Video-Based Measurements of Driver’s Gaze Location (Schieber, et. al, 1998)

25. Future Research Recommendations
Time-based eye glance measures may be more appropriate than task-based eye glance measures when developing a system designed to mitigate driver distraction
Several eye glance measures are reliable measures of visual distraction that can be used in a real-time system using adaptive interface technologies.
Total eyes-off-road glance duration
Sum of mean glance duration, number of glances, and frequency of use for a task or device

26. Comments/Thoughts
The technology becoming available in vehicles is progressing faster than research.
Entertainment systems: DVD players
Collision avoidance systems
Speech-based internet and
Laptop/handheld computer
Night visions systems
What about the combination of more than one driver distraction?
What about the novice-expert difference?