It’s tough at the office when you’re trying to jot down directions, receive a fax, return e-mail and snag that ringing phone.
Imagine juggling all of this while you’re behind the wheel of your car.
A joke, you say?
Far from it.
We have cell phones, fax machines and computers on the passenger seat, plus navigation systems in the dash. But on their way are built-in computers with Internet access and entertainment systems.
While it’s exciting, this wave of technology has some industry folks worrying about how distracting the devices might be to drivers.
The fear of sensory overload for a driver is nothing new. Worries have been voiced since cellular phones were first used in cars in the mid-1980s.
The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, the regulatory body charged with establishing safety standards for automobiles, recently issued a 300-page report on safety problems related to cellular-phone use.
In the study, NHTSA found an increase in the risk of crashes while on the phone.
A separate study by the University of Toronto found that drivers using a cell phone are four times more likely to get in an accident and that their rate of risk is equal to a drunken driver’s.
The study doesn’t suggest cell phones cause accidents, but that cell phone users should be more careful.
Now the automakers, the Society of Automotive Engineers, federal regulators and independent researchers are going a step farther to determine whether the same holds true for driving with such gadgets as navigation systems and personal computers.
The SAE, with $16 million from the Federal Highway Administration, has commissioned a number of research projects to establish voluntary safety standards for future products. The idea is to create some consistency in the market for drivers and automakers and to set some standards before the government mandates them.
One of the most talked-about of these SAE projects is taking place at the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute human factors division in Ann Arbor.
Led by Paul Green, 10 researchers are trying to figure out how distracting driver information and navigation systems can be. Those systems, fairly expensive options on many cars now, can tell everything from how to get to Kalamazoo to the location of the nearest KFC.
Green has been preaching the need for standards for such devices since the early 1980s. At that time, everyone thought he was crazy to be suggesting such things as on-board computers and navigation systems.
They don’t think he’s crazy anymore. Now automakers pay his institute $50,000 to $1 million to research the effects of technology on drivers. The SAE project costs $75,000.
In the past, Green says, automotive engineers would work to apply technology first and then consider how the driver would interact with it. Now the opposite is true.
“They realize human interaction is much more important now than other innovations of the past,” Green says.
Jim Foley, who heads the SAE navigation subcommittee, is a human-factors technical specialist with Ford Motor Co.’s Visteon Automotive Systems partsmaker.
“The technology is there, and somebody is going to figure out how to use it in a car,” Foley says. “Our concern is that it’s driver-friendly. What we don’t want to do is put a device in with the automotive equivalent to the VCR blinking 12:00.”
What Green is trying to do is figure out at what point drivers are going to be overloaded.
It’s not uncommon for drivers to look away from the road three to four seconds to check a clock or radio, Green says.
Some of the new technology requires 10 to 15 seconds to complete a task. “That’s a heck of a lot more time,” he says.
For SAE’s latest navigation-system standards, Green is trying to determine what a driver should be allowed to do in a moving vehicle and what alternatives may be in operating the system.
For instance, should a driver enter the destination address or scroll through a list of addresses?
Green also is careful about comparisons.
“Reading a map in the car is risky, too,” he said. Having a navigation system is intended to take away some of the risk of fumbling with a map.
When he’s doing research, Green uses local volunteers who get paid $15 an hour to drive specially rigged test vehicles or a $300,000 vehicle simulator in the institute’s lab.
The simulator consists of the front end of a 1985 Chrysler Laser hooked to four computers generating sound and driving effects.
Before the driver is a large screen with a road scene. Driving the simulator is a little like operating a video game.
In this case, though, the object is to monitor how long a driver can safely take his or her eyes off the road.
With the car humming along the colorful, curvy virtual highway, researchers ask drivers to fiddle with a mock computer panel on the console or some simulation of the new gadgets.
The driver feels the tug of a gravely shoulder at the wheel. A quick look to the road and the driver sees the car headed for the ditch. Only in this case the car safely reappears on the road after the crash.
For the current SAE navigation project, Green is gathering past research and proposing guidelines.
Because his work is in its preliminary stages, the researcher won’t hint at his conclusions.
But he does suggest a few restrictions will be necessary with any of these technologies.
“Navigation systems are useful to drivers and can be operated safely,” he says. “But you can’t put out everything people are talking about now. You must balance safety and risk.
“If you start reading e-mail or browsing the Internet, I think that’s getting to be a bit much,” he says.
