Mental workload and driving

Abstract

The aim of this review is to identify the most representative measures of subjective and objective mental workload in driving, and to understand how the subjective and objective levels of mental workload influence the performance as a function of situation complexity and driving experience, i.e., to verify whether the increase of situation complexity and the lack of experience increase the subjective and physiological levels of mental workload and lead to driving performance impairments. This review will be useful to both researchers designing an experimental study of mental workload and to designers of drivers’ training content. In the first part, we will broach the theoretical approach with two factors of mental workload and performance, i.e., situation complexity and driving experience. Indeed, a low complex situation (e.g., highways), or conversely a high complex situation (e.g., town) can provoke an overload. Additionally, performing the driving tasks implies producing a high effort for novice drivers who have not totally automated the driving activity. In the second part, we will focus on subjective measures of mental workload. A comparison of questionnaires usually used in driving will allow identifying the most appropriate ones as a function of different criteria. Moreover, we will review the empirical studies to verify if the subjective level of mental workload is high in simple and very complex situations, especially for novice drivers compared to the experienced ones. In the third part, we will focus on physiological measures. A comparison of physiological indicators will be realized in order to identify the most correlated to mental workload. An empirical review will also take the effect of situation complexity and experience on these physiological indicators into consideration. Finally, a more nuanced comparison between subjective and physiological measures will be established from the impact on situation complexity and experience.

Heart Rate Variability Analysis and Performance during a Repeated Mental Workload Task

“…By comparing within sessions, dfa2 and RPadet were found significantly different between session 1 and 4, while ShanEn between session 3 and 4. Previous studies [15][16][17], showed that as one task's demand increases, HRV becomes more depressed. Added to this, here we found that also on repetitive tasks, there is a depressed HRV over sessions, which is possibly due to an increase in mental workload.…”

Burnout, Occupational Stress, Health and Road Accidents among Bus Drivers: Barriers and Challenges for Prevention

“…For instance, Kontogiannis found that behaviors on the road significantly predict traffic accidents in professional drivers [14,59]. Taking into account that the safe operation of motor vehicles depends on a combination of psychomotor skills and environmental factors, variables such as work stressors [58,60,61], cognitive overstimulation [55], weather, road conditions [62], driving performance [51,33], and prolonged interaction with other road users [63] are key factors to consider in the management of safety issues in the transport industry [6].…”

Driving while using a smartphone-based mobility application: Evaluating the impact of three multi-choice user interfaces on visual-manual distraction

“…Finally, the driving task used in this study was relatively simple, and consisted of a rural, straightroad with only one additional vehicle. Such a driving condition could be considered as placing a low mental workload on the driver (Paxion et al, 2014). Hence replicating the study with different driving scenarios with a range of imposed mental workloads would allow for a higher generalisation of the results.…”