Right: The UK’s TRL is
exploring the impact
of driver distraction
using simulation
The UK’s Transport Research
Laboratory (TRL) is using a
driving simulator to compare
the impact of various forms of driver
impairment. The results may surprise
drivers who had assumed hands-free
equated to safe.
“Someone speaking on a phone
while driving tends to reduce speed,
to cope with the added demand,”
explains Dr Neale Kinnear, TRL’s
head of behavioral science. “They
tend to stay in lane, so their visual
focus becomes narrowed, and
subconsciously increase the gap to
the car in front. They create a kind of
bubble around them, to compensate
for taking on an additional task.”
Talking hands-free entails cognitive
distraction – taking your mind off
the road. “Scrolling through music
tracks or social media or typing a text
are considered the most dangerous
tasks,” says Kinnear. Essentially, it is
often a phone’s social functionalities,
not necessary to the task of driving,
which are most retrograde to safety
– but cars are increasingly being
marketed as connected, social spaces.
Now, TRL are concerned that the
evidence base has failed to keep
pace with new vehicle infotainment
systems and human-machine
interfaces (HMIs) structured by
touchscreens or involving the
smartphone as a central component.
Kinnear identifies certain principles
that carmakers could adhere to ensure
rapidly evolving HMIs do not foster
dangerous forms of driver distraction.
“Ideally, an HMI should minimize
visual distraction,” says Kinnear.
“It should be intuitive and not
cognitively demanding. It should
have effective timing and give you
feedback – haptic, audible or both –
removing uncertainty about whether
your choice has been selected. The
difficulty lies in a single device having
different potential operations, each
with its own impact: the mobile phone
is an example of that. Manufacturers
are introducing new technology into
vehicles, but research is critical to
ensure the solutions are not having
unintended effects which actually
increase distraction.”
The race against distraction
Researches at TRL warn that as technology and connectivity in
cars increases the potential for distraction is increasing, too
or on moving platforms such as cabs
or buses.
Auto distraction detection
But a method of automated detection
using fixed infrastructure could soon
be at hand. A pilot scheme in Sydney,
Australia uses high-definition
cameras linked to machine learning
to capture 12MP images through the
windscreens of vehicles moving at
speed. “The solution detects each
vehicle using radar technology,
triggering high-resolution images to
be taken. It then analyzes them to
determine if the driver is using a
phone,” explains Alex Jannink,
managing director of Acusensus,
whose Heads-Up system forms the
basis of the pilot. “The innovations
are being able to capture high-quality
photographs through a windshield in
any light or weather conditions and
at any vehicle speed, detecting each
and every case of illegal phone use,
and automatically identifying phone
use through machine learning, which
trains the system to recognize
patterns using large datasets.” The
system provides double-encrypted,
signed and traceable packages, with
flagged images submitted for human
review and providing evidence
potentially defensible in court,
25 % The estimated number
of crashes caused by
distraction, according to
Queensland University
of Technology,
Australia
Distraction Detection |
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Traffic Technology International July/August 2019
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