IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2015 - 93

features such as dashboard infotainment, smartphone
applications, and voice translation writing [31]-[35]. For
example, a recent set of high profile studies has been
conducted through the collaboration between David
Strayer's laboratory at the University of Utah and the
American Automobile Association. These studies crossexamine a variety of tasks in an assortment of experimental settings. Across these studies, the tasks under
examination include (but are not limited to) listening to
the radio, listening to an audiobook, using a handheld
phone, using a hands-free phone, listening to and composing emails through the use of a selection of infotainment systems, and the use of the iPhone's Siri program.
The experimental settings include an assessment of
the baseline non-driving use of these devices, their use
while in a driving simulator, and their use while driving a
car in a controlled residential setting. These studies are
designed to assess the "cognitive workload" of the various tasks under examination, measured in a number of
ways, from an electroencephalograph cap, to eye-tracking devices, to a heartrate monitor, to a peripheral vision
signal detection task which involves a small flashing light
attached to an arm mounted to the driver's head.
The perhaps surprising finding is that voice-to-text
translation is associated with the greatest level of cognitive demand [32].
Indeed, when compared to the various other tasks,
using Siri to compose text while driving was the most
cognitively burdensome [35]. And not surprisingly, the
level of cognitive demand overall bears some dependence on the length of the total interaction with the infotainment system and the quality of its voice recognition,
with, for example, simple car-control voice commands
proving much less cognitively demanding than the voice
composition of messages. But while such findings are
useful and suggestive, there exist thus far only a handful of pioneering studies, especially when compared to
the decades-long body of research on handheld and
hands-free phone conversation.

Brain-Centered Account
Although there is no agreed upon theoretical account
within the empirical literature, it is possible to abstract
from researchers' presentations of their findings a generally held understanding of the nature of the driver
distraction of the cell phone conversation. Put broadly,
the account can be summarized as follows: the driving impairment of both handheld and hands-free cell
phone conversation is the result of our brains' inability
to adequately allocate our limited cognitive resources
across the two demanding tasks of driving and using
the phone. That is, cell-phone-induced driving impairment is due to our brains' inherent inability to effectively multitask. Let us refer to this as the "brain-centered"
December 2015

∕

account. In this view, driving and phone conversation
are each conceived as cognitively demanding tasks.
They each use up a portion of our limited store of cognitive resources. And they are each understood to be so
demanding that when performed together, the human
brain does not possess the resources to safely perform
this "dual-task scenario."2
This brain-centered account is useful for confronting
a pervasive and pernicious intuition about cell phones
and driving: that the nature of the distraction of cell
phones is only manual and visual. That is, many people
assume that the driver distraction of cell phones in due
only to the ways that phone usage takes a driver's hand
off the wheel or eyes off the road. But as we have seen,
the research shows this otherwise intuitive view to be
flawed since hands-free phone usage (which involves
neither hands off the wheel nor eyes off the road) is
associated with the same drop in driving performance
as handheld phones. The brain-centered account offers
an alternative to this intuition. In addition to the manual
and visual distraction of phones, we can also consider
their potential for "cognitive distraction."
The usefulness of this account is reflected in the
efforts at raising public awareness engaged by largescale institutions in the U.S. For example, the U.S. government's Department of Transportation runs a website
specifically for public outreach on the topic of distracted
driving called "Distraction.gov." In the FAQ for this site
[35], the distraction of hands-free phones is summarized this way: "So far, the research indicates that the
cognitive distraction of having a hands-free phone conversation causes drivers to miss the important visual
and audio cues that would ordinarily help you avoid a
crash." The National Safety Council, a U.S.-based nonprofit organization, entitles their 2012 white paper on
the topic: "Understanding the Distracted Brain." They
explain that drivers must understand just how "cognitively complex it is to talk on the phone and drive a
vehicle at the same time, and why this drains the brain's
resources" [36, p. 5].

Traffic Law
If the science of in-cab connectivity struggles to keep
pace with technological development, then the public
policy stumbles slowly behind them both. The central
advance in traffic policy over the last decade has been
the proliferation of anti-texting-while-driving measures
enacted across a wide range of countries worldwide, and
across the majority of states in the U.S. Although much
2
What I am calling the "brain-centered account" here covers over the differences that appear in the language used in the literature. While many
papers do use a vocabulary of "cognitive resources," several other terms
are also used to refer to the mental stuff at issue, from "information processing capacity," to "attention" as a finite quantity, to "mental workload."

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