Touchscreens on car dashboards increase driver distraction ^{CEFR B2}

Researchers investigated how the shift from physical buttons to large touchscreens on car dashboards changes driver behaviour and task performance. In a vehicle simulator study with 16 participants, drivers used a 12-inch touchscreen while also doing an N-back memory task (they heard numbers and had to repeat certain digits). To estimate cognitive load, the team recorded gaze, finger movements, pupil diameter and electrodermal activity.

The results showed clear declines in both driving and touch interaction during multitasking. Lane drift increased by 42% when participants interacted with the touchscreen. Touchscreen speed and accuracy fell by 58% while driving and dropped a further 17% under high cognitive load. Each glance at the screen became 26.3% shorter under high load, and the share of trials with a “hand-before-eye” reach rose from 63% to 71% when the memory task was added. Enlarging touch targets did not improve performance; as Xiyuan Alan Shen noted, people often move their hand before they look, so visual search—rather than button size—limits performance.

The authors presented the work at the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology in Busan, Korea. They propose that future in-car systems could use simple sensors, such as eye tracking or touch sensors on the steering wheel, to monitor attention and cognitive load and then adapt the interface to make important controls more prominent. Co-senior authors include James Fogarty and Jacob O. Wobbrock; additional coauthors are from the University of Washington and Toyota Research Institute. The work was funded in part by TRI. Source: University of Washington.