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. 2021 Jul 2;18(13):7101.
doi: 10.3390/ijerph18137101.

Effects of Mobile Phone Use on Driving Performance: An Experimental Study of Workload and Traffic Violations

Carlos A Catalina Ortega  1 , Miguel A Mariscal  1 , Wafa Boulagouas  1 , Sixto Herrera  2 , Juan M Espinosa  1 , Susana García-Herrero  1
Affiliations

Effects of Mobile Phone Use on Driving Performance: An Experimental Study of Workload and Traffic Violations

Carlos A Catalina Ortega et al. Int J Environ Res Public Health. .

Abstract

The use of communication technologies, e.g., mobile phones, has increased dramatically in recent years, and their use among drivers has become a great risk to traffic safety. The present study assessed the workload and road ordinary violations, utilizing driving data collected from 39 young participants who underwent a dual-task while driving a simulator, i.e., respond to a call, text on WhatsApp, and check Instagram. Findings confirmed that there are significant differences in the driving performance of young drivers in terms of vehicle control (i.e., lateral distance and hard shoulder line violations) between distracted and non-distracted drivers. Furthermore, the overall workload score of young drivers increases with the use of their mobile phones while driving. The obtained results contribute to a better understanding of the driving performance of distracted young drivers and thus they could be useful for further improvements to traffic safety strategies.

Keywords: distractions; drivers; mobile; phone; traffic; violations; workload; young.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; or in the decision to publish the results.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Descriptive of the study sample: (a) Frequency of the license years; (b) Km driven per year; (c) Driving frequency between daily, weekly, monthly and yearly; (d) How much the participants love to drive.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Simulator with three screens used in the study.
Figure 3
Figure 3
The trajectory of the experiment.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Regression tree related to the number of violations of Lateral Distance.
Figure 5
Figure 5
The Regression tree related to crossing over the hard shoulder line violations.
Figure 6
Figure 6
NASA-TLX scores with and without mobile phone distractions.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Importance graph related to crossing over the hard shoulder line violations.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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