The conundrum of connectivity

Vehicles can do much more, but can drivers?

Gerry column

Would you knowingly sell a customer an unsafe vehicle? Even if he or she demanded it?

Of course not. And yet, we as an industry are selling cars and trucks every day that enable customers to use them in an unsafe manner – even if we, or they, may not recognize that fact.

The dangers of distracted driving when using hand-held phones are well known and many jurisdictions have made their use illegal while driving. To help address that issue, phone makers and automakers have adopted Bluetooth technology, which wirelessly connects the two, enabling hands-free communication while driving.

Most new cars have Bluetooth available and many have gone much further with built-in voice-activated systems that let a driver do everything from finding directions, choosing their music, sending and receiving texts and emails, checking their stock portfolios, to setting their climate control.

All the while keeping their hands on the wheel and eyes on the road, if one believes the rhetoric.

But new studies suggest that taking the phone out of the driver’s hand is far from a panacea for driver distraction. While such distraction may result from looking away from the road to interact with a device, be it a phone or a touch screen, it can also be caused by strictly cognitive activity or mental interference, in simpler language.

Distraction occurs any time the driver’s mental resources are diverted from processing the information necessary to operate the vehicle safely. Whenever a driver’s attention is diverted to an engaging secondary task, such as talking on a phone, visual scanning is disrupted, prediction of hazards is impaired, decisions for action are altered, and appropriate reactions are delayed, the research shows.

While several studies have suggested that the use of hands-free communication devices may be just as distracting as hand-held phone use, few studies have addressed the subject as thoroughly as one released recently by the U.S.-based AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety.

Called “Measuring Cognitive Distraction in the Automobile II,” the study bypassed the whole hand-held aspect altogether and focused just on the effects of various forms of voice communication.

In particular, the study addressed the effects of using various voice-activated interactive technologies right down to the specific systems marketed by different automakers. And it named names!

To ensure the validity of the research, it effectively triplicated the study with the same test subjects in a laboratory setting, a driving simulator, and a real car in real-world driving. The research built on a previous study by the Foundation that established a scale for quantifying the mental workload involved in different types of communications. On that 1-to-5 scale, one is the mental workload equivalent of performing a single, simple task, such as listening to the radio, while doing nothing else, while five equates to a complex, multi-faceted mental task.

To put that scale in perspective, the study rated various voice tasks as follows:

  • Directing the car to do something, such as changing temperature – 1.9
  • Listening to information via a synthetic voice – 2.2
  • Responding to a question from voice system – 3.1
  • Interacting with a typical voice menu – 3.8
  • Interacting with Siri – 4.1

Not surprisingly, the study concludes that, “some voice-based interactions in the vehicle may have unintended consequences that adversely affect traffic safety.” Stated differently, the amount of attention that has to be given to the voice-communication task subtracts from that available to the driving task — it distracts the driver!

A companion research project focused on five production vehicles with voice-based systems: a Ford equipped with MyFord Touch; a Chevrolet equipped with MyLink; a Chrysler equipped with Uconnect; a Toyota equipped with Entune; a Mercedes-Benz equipped with COMAND; and a Hyundai equipped with Blue Link.

Toyota’s Entune imposed the lowest level of cognitive workload (1.70), with the levels increasing through Blue Link (2.2), Uconnect (2.6), Ford MyTouch (3.0), COMAND (3.10), and Chevy MyLink (3.6). All, however, were less distracting than the Siri system evaluated in the primary program.

The study concluded that the more verbose the system, the greater the number of steps required to execute an action. And the more comprehension errors that arose, the more distracting the system ended up being.

Does that mean we should stop selling these complex connectivity systems? Should we stop selling high-powered cars that can reach truly dangerous speeds? How drivers choose to use such features is ultimately their own decision.

But maybe, just maybe, we should consider not only selling them these systems but also pointing out some of the hazards associated with their use.

About Gerry Malloy

Gerry Malloy is one of Canada's best known, award-winning automotive journalists.

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