Towards SystemMediated Car Passenger Communication

In this paper, we outline a system that supports the com-munication between passengers by transmitting speech (and maybe also video) of the communication partners back and forth. A study is presented that addresses the questions: 1. Is listening to noisy speech coming from the backseat re-ally distracting the driver? Subjects are rating the truth of common-sense statements played from the back of the car (clear, noisy) while driving with a drive simulator. noisy is rated significantly more distracting than clear while objec-tive driving performance only degrades for men but not for women