On-Road Evaluation of Destination Entry and Way-Finding Tasks: Comparisons Against Normal Driving

While relative comparisons between “distracting” tasks (e.g. dialing a cell phone vs. talking on the cell phone) are useful, “normal driving” remains the benchmark for any task performed by the driver while a vehicle is in motion. Arguably, tasks that are less risky will result in observed patterns of driver behavior that are closer to those observed during normal driving. This paper describes the outcome of a study to compare destination entry and wayfinding across different navigation devices (with different input modalities) against epochs where the driver was not tasked with any other secondary or tertiary tasks (beyond occasional conversation with the experimenter). Results indicate some significant differences between destination entry tasks and normal driving, the magnitudes of which are mainly modulated by the input modality. Differences were less obvious during the navigation tasks, likely due to the intermittent nature of interactions with the navigation device in that context. Total eyes off-road time was also subjected to comparisons against previously published crash and nearcrash risk estimate models. The results suggest that, assuming confidence in the models, there may be differences in the levels of crash and near-crash risk associated with different navigation devices. The approach is presented as a potential additional metric to consider in assessing devices that are used by drivers in moving vehicles