A Comparison of the Cell Phone Driver and the Drunk Driver.pdf.pdf

INTRODUCTION Although they are often reminded to pay full attention to driving, people regularly engage in a wide variety of multitasking activities when they are behind the wheel. Indeed, data from the 2000 U.S. census indicates that drivers spend an aver- age of 25.5 min each day commuting to work, and there is a growing interest in trying to make the time spent on the roadway more productive (Reschovsky, 2004). Unfortunately, because of the inherent limited capacity of human attention (e.g., Kahneman, 1973; Navon Gopher, 1979), engaging in these multitasking activities often comes at a cost of diverting attention away from the primary task of driving. There are a number of more traditional sources of driver distraction. These “old standards” include talking to passen- gers, eating, drinking, lighting a cigarette, apply- ing makeup, and listening to the radio (Stutts et al., 2003). However, over the last decade many new electronic devices have been developed, and they are making their way into the vehicle. In many cases, these new technologies are engag- ing, interactive information delivery systems. For example, drivers can now surf the Internet, send and receive E-mail or faxes, communicate via a cellular device, and even watch television. There is good reason to believe that some of these new multitasking activities may be substantially more distracting than the old standards because they are more cognitively engaging and because they are performed over longer periods of time. The current research focuses on a dual-task activity that is commonly engaged in by more than 100 million drivers in the United States: the concurrent use of cell phones while driving (Cel- lular Telecommunications Industry Association, 2006; Goodman et al., 1999). Indeed, the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration A Comparison of the Cell Phone Driver and the Drunk Driver David L. Strayer, Frank A. Drews, and Dennis J. Crouch, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah Obje