Providing conversation partners views of the driving scene mitigates cell phone-related distraction

Cognitively demanding cell phone conversations impair driving performance. In some situations, conversations with a passenger are less disruptive than cell phone conversations, in theory because of heightened situational awareness. Here, drivers completed challenging freeway drives in a high-fidelity simulator while conversing with a partner. The pairs engaged in naturalistic conversations in three different conditions: remotely on a hands-free phone, as a passenger in the vehicle, and in a videophone condition where the hands-free phone experience was enhanced by a live video the driving scene and the driver's face. This condition was designed to increase the conversation partner's awareness of the driving situation to a level similar to that of an in-vehicle passenger, to test our hypothesis that this cognizance leads to less distracted driving. We compared these conversation conditions to a driving-alone condition. Drivers were involved in more collisions with merging vehicles in the phone condition compared to drive-alone, passenger or videophone conditions, and crucially there was no difference in collisions between the passenger and videophone conditions. Providing remote conversation partner information about the driver and driving scene reduces the detrimental effect of cell phone conversations, possibly by increasing shared situational awareness.