News - Hands-free technology causing driver ‘inattention blindness’

[HEXUS]

Voice control and voice interaction with gadgets is particularly distracting.

Read more.

[xeryus]

As we're all supposed to be car sharing to curb pollution etc, they should really do a study to see if having another person in the car with you will also cause "inattention blindness".

[cjs150]

What if the hands-free technology is your wife/husband telling you that you have gone the wrong way - if that also "inattention blindness"

[krazy_olie]

Doesn't surprise me.

[addz17]

It only took 2 years for them to find out that
“It takes longer for distracted drivers to connect what they see to an appropriate reaction such as braking or swerving to safety” and that having a chat with an incompetent voice recognition system may prove distracting.
Do students in Utah not have anything better to study than stuff we already know?
Perhaps new cars should have some sort of sensory deprivation cell for the driver where he/she cannot hear, see or feel any non driving related stimulus.

[aidanjt]

We should be phasing out human drivers, anyway. Even at the best of times humans are rubbish at driving.

[ed^chigliak]

Knight Industries Two Thousand.

For every distraction there is an equal and opposite

a) abstraction
b) attraction
c) subtraction
d) car crash

[aidanjt]

Do students in Utah not have anything better to study than stuff we already know?

That's the difference between science and speculation.

[Tarinder]

I didn't see that coming!

[miniyazz]

That's the difference between science and speculation.

Not when this is a well known fact backed up by plenty of studies some time ago.
e.g. http://www.webmd.com/balance/news/20...driving-safety in 2010, or http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0129080944.htm in 2003.

However, since it's pretty much impossible to enforce, there's no legislation against it (didn't stop the government legislating against other things that are impossible to enforce though).
Also there are times when you might be on call for something and occasionally need to be contacted to handle an emergency - something which you might well need to handle over the phone while driving to the emergency, not sure if that played a role or not though.

[aidanjt]

Not when this is a well known fact backed up by plenty of studies some time ago.
e.g. http://www.webmd.com/balance/news/20...driving-safety in 2010, or http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0129080944.htm in 2003.

Talking to a person isn't the same as issuing commands to your phone and getting feedback. This study builds upon the previous work done in Utah, and it's very important data for understanding cognitive science as well as making informed, non-speculative road safety policy.

[DeludedGuy]

On how many people did they test this on? 1? 10? 100?

[miniyazz]

Talking to a person isn't the same as issuing commands to your phone and getting feedback. This study builds upon the previous work done in Utah, and it's very important data for understanding cognitive science as well as making informed, non-speculative road safety policy.

Fair enough, I missed the bit about voice commands etc.

[crossy]

I'm going to agree with this - to an extent. I've no problem with the basic features - "answer", "call fred", etc. But I've real issues with - as the article says - with the speech to text features, I really don't think people should be texting while driving, (and don't get me started on web browsing etc!). I'm also less than impressed with the text-driven features that some of these satnav apps have too.

I'd also argue that the manufacturer's could help by giving a soupcon of extra thought in their "convenience" features. As an example, Samsung's S-Voice, which sounds like a great idea to cut the amount of finger interaction needed to drive the S3 and S4 phones. Problem is that if my S3 is paired with a bluetooth headset, I can long-press that button to get S-Voice to phone my wife, but when the call connects invariably the headset option isn't enabled and so you start a call by yelling "give me a sec" so you can find and press that button to switch the mic input to headset.

And all that is VERY distracting while trying to drive - even with the phone mounted high on the windscreen.

Then again, the enforcement of the rules against using hand-held mobiles while driving is pretty patchy - even saw a couple of cops doing it the other day.

[sawyen]

So research councils rejects my grant proposals on HIV research to fund this??!!

I had hoped that them dwindling research fund since 09 has been put to good use, apparently not...

[CCODEZ]

So doing anything other than driving while driving a vehicle is a distraction?

Well who would have thought... oh wait...