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Background

The increasing use of in-vehicle infotainment systems while driving has led to concerns around driver distraction and the potential impact on road safety. A review for the European Commission estimated that driver distraction is likely to be a factor in 10 to 30% of all road collisions in Europe each year (TRL, TNO & RappTrans, 2015). Multiple studies have measured in-vehicle distraction when driving while performing secondary tasks such as hand-held and hands-free mobile phone use, text messaging and social media (Basacik et al., 2011; Parkes et al., 2007; Reed & Robbins, 2008). All studies concluded that there were various forms of distraction (cognitive, visual and physical) that negatively affected driving performance. Similar negative effects were also reported from use of modern in-vehicle manufacturer installed infotainment systems (Strayer et al., 2017). Subsequent research compared manufacturer systems to more recent applications, namely Google’s Android Auto and Apple’s CarPlay and found that these applications resulted in lower workload levels (Strayer et al., 2018). Nevertheless, little research has been conducted to understand the impact of these new popular mobile-based infotainment systems on driving performance.

IAM RoadSmart in partnership with the FIA Foundation and Rees Jeffreys Road Fund commissioned TRL to explore the impact of Android Auto and Apple CarPlay on driver performance using TRL’s High Fidelity 300o DigiCar simulator. It also sought to compare the results to other forms of driver impairment from previous studies that used the same simulator ‘impairment’route.