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Drivers commonly perform secondary tasks while behind the wheel to navigate or communicate with others, which has led to a significant increase in the number of injuries and fatalities attributed to distracted driving. Advances in wearable technology, particularly devices such as Google Glass, which feature voice control and head-up display (HUD) functionalities, raise questions about how these devices might impact driver attention when used in vehicles. New human factors/ergonomics research examines how these interface characteristics can have a deleterious effect on safety.
In their Human Factors article, "Driving While Interacting With Google Glass: Investigating the Combined Effect of Head-Up Display and Hands-Free Input on Driving Safety and Multitask Performance," authors Kathryn Tippey, Elayaraj Sivaraj, and Thomas Ferris observed the performance of 24 participants in a driving simulator. The participants engaged in four texting-while-driving tasks: baseline (driving only), and driving plus reading and responding to text messages via (a) a smartphone keyboard, (b) a smartphone voice-to text system, and (c) Google Glass' voice-to-text system using HUD.
The authors found that driving performance degraded regardless of secondary texting task type, but manual entry led to slower reaction times and significantly more eyes-off-road glances than voice-to-text input using both smartphones and Google Glass. Glass' HUD function required only a change in eye direction to read and respond to text messages, rather than the more disruptive change in head and body posture associated with smartphones. Participants also reported that Glass was easier to use and interfered less with driving than did the other devices tested.
IOW, wait until you're in a self-driving car before you mix texting and driving.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday April 15 2017, @04:38AM (4 children)
Not necessary.
Example: try to drive while speaking in a foreign language that you know but don't speak regularly, see how it goes.
If the example doesn't apply to your conditions, try the same with a problem you can solve with pen on paper, except you know you go in your mind while driving (e.g. extract as square root).
(actually, it's safer to not do any of the above, I don't want to have your life on my conscience.)
Now, not all the tasks will be that complicated, but any task will steal a more or less from the capacity of your brain. Even some easy tasks may prove fatal while driving (don't believe me? I think daydreaming qualify as an easy task, right?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Saturday April 15 2017, @01:20PM (1 child)
the sensation of having "brain cycles overloaded" is an interesting one - live translation of languages (a few hours is real work!)
Self-driving cars, can't arrive fast enough....;-)
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday April 15 2017, @03:58PM
I won't use one unless I can't avoid it. I'm a software engineer, occasionally doing QA work, I trust my human senses more than I trust a software.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Saturday April 15 2017, @02:16PM (1 child)
Example: try to drive while speaking in a foreign language that you know but don't speak regularly, see how it goes.
It's hard. Harder than you might expect. But if your passenger is navigating and speaks only that language....
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday April 15 2017, @03:55PM
As an immigrant who needed to take driving lessons with a driving instructor in the new home country some months after arrival, I know it very well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford