Understanding Willingness to Respond to Messages and its Relationship to Driving Performance

Abstract

Research has demonstrated that distracted driving degrades performance. Factors influencing the decision to drive distracted were investigated. In experiment one, participants completed a discounting task where they chose between a smaller reward immediately or a delayed larger reward paired with the opportunity to text. Participants indicated willingness to wait to respond to a text in four scenes: two weather conditions and two modalities of the message. Willingness to wait to respond was related to modality but not weather. Individuals were placed into groups based on responses and differed in waiting preferences in all scenes. In experiment two, the discounting task was used and participants completed six drives consisting of three secondary tasks in two traffic levels. Participants completed the DRT measure of workload and rated driving performance. Drivers differed in driving performance and rating of driving performance for the tasks. These results have implications understanding the decision to drive distracted.