The effects of travel information presentation through nomadic systems on driver behaviour

Introduction The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of providing travel information to drivers about a traffic jam ahead and a potential detour or short-cut. Two groups of participants, native and non-native Dutch speakers were requested to drive in a driving simulator under both calm and dense traffic conditions. Method Travel-information was presented by means of three nomadic systems; in visual mode on a PDA and on a mobile phone via SMS, and through a mobile phone in auditory mode via the (simulator mock-up) vehicle’s audio system. Results The results showed that with regard to usability the SMS message was evaluated worse than the other two systems, while with respect to cognitive processing, SMS caused more subjective (i.e. experienced) workload than the other two systems. Native participants believed any information-providing system to be less useful than non-native participants did. All participants remembered more of the information when traffic was dense whereas natives remembered more than non-natives. With regard to performance and safety, driving performance was better when traffic was calm, as compared to dense traffic; however, compensation was shown by lowering driving speed in the latter condition. After participants were provided with travel information, their driving performance with respect to the consequences of distraction differed between systems. Conclusion The auditory information provision system allowed the best driving performance; the other two systems required the participants to look away from the road (too) long compromising safety, while reading an SMS took longer than scanning a PDA.