title: A simulator evaluation of the effects of attention maintenance training on glance distributions of younger novice drivers inside and outside the vehicle.
abstract: Driver distraction inside and outside the vehicle is increasingly a problem, especially for younger drivers. In many cases the distraction is associated with long glances away from the forward roadway. Such glances have been shown to be highly predictive of crashes. Ideally, one would like to develop and evaluate a training program which reduced these long glances. Thus, an experiment was conducted in a driving simulator to test the efficacy of a training program, FOCAL, that was developed to teach novice drivers to limit the duration of glances that are inside the vehicle while performing an in-vehicle task, such as looking for a CD or finding the 4-way flashers. The test in the simulator showed that the FOCAL trained group performed significantly better than the placebo trained group on several measures, notably on the percentage of within-vehicle glances that were greater than 2, 2.5, and 3 s. However, the training did not generalize to glances away from the roadway (e.g., when drivers were asked to attend to a sign adjacent to the roadway, both trained and untrained novice drivers were equally likely to make especially long glances at the sign).
authors.affiliation: Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Massachusetts, Elab 302, Amherst, MA 01003, USA.
authors.forename: Gautam
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Divekar
authors.affiliation: Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Massachusetts, Elab 110, Amherst, MA 01003, USA.
authors.forename: Anuj K
authors.initials: AK
authors.lastname: Pradhan
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Massachusetts, Tobin Hall, Amherst, MA 01003, USA.
authors.forename: Kathleen M
authors.initials: KM
authors.lastname: Masserang
authors.affiliation: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 1200 New Jersey Ave., SE, Washington, DC 20590, USA.
authors.forename: Ian
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Reagan
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Massachusetts, Tobin Hall, Amherst, MA 01003, USA.
authors.forename: Alexander
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Pollatsek
authors.affiliation: Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Massachusetts, Elab 220A, Amherst, MA 01003, USA.
authors.forename: Donald L
authors.initials: DL
authors.lastname: Fisher
keywords: Driver distraction; Driver training; Eye movements; Nomadic tasks; Younger drivers