Frontiers of Engineering: Reports on Leading-Edge Engineering from the 2008 Symposium

Details

• Corporate Authors:
  National Academy of Engineering
• Description:
  Driving confronts people with many of the same demands as other high-tempo, high-consequence, complex activities. People who provide health care, manage power plants, and control aircraft face similar multitasking demands, many of which are mediated by technology (Hollnagel et al., 2006; Moray, 1993; Vicente, 1999). Drivers must divide their attention among navigation, hazard detection, speed control, and lane maintenance. In addition, drivers often engage in nondriving activities, such as conversing with passengers and adjusting entertainment systems. In this multitask situation, a driver's attention is a limited, critical resource, and safety can be compromised when a driver fails to direct attention to the right place at the right time. A recent study based on detailed data on 100 vehicles for a year showed that distractions and inattention (e.g., fatigue) contributed to approximately 80 percent of crashes and that distraction contributed to approximately 65 percent of rear-end crashes (Klauer et al., 2006). Unfortunately, this problem is likely to get worse, because driver distractions are likely to increase with rapid advances in wireless, computer, and sensor technologies (Regan et al., 2008). Not only will drivers have to manage cell phones, radios, and CD players, but they may also be tempted to use text messaging, select from MP3 music catalogs, and retrieve information from the Internet. Rapid changes in vehicle design are being made to accommodate these new devices. Nearly 70 percent of new 2007 vehicles are compatible with MP3 players, and all 2009 Chrysler vehicles will have wireless connections to the Internet (Bensinger, 2008). These infotainment devices have the potential to make driving time more enjoyable and productive, but they also have the potential to distract drivers. ... Conclusion: Technology changes the nature of driving by introducing new vulnerabilities and capacities (Woods and Dekker, 2000). Infotainment systems introduce new distractions that can undermine safety. Driver-assistance technologies promise to mitigate these distractions and improve safety. But we will not reap the potential benefits of these devices with a technology-only approach. Drivers tend to reject or misuse imperfect technologies that automate driving rather than augmenting driver capabilities. Cognitive engineering methods can show the way to using technology to leverage human capabilities to improve the safety and performance of complex systems by enhancing self-awareness and the awareness of potentially distracting technology. Increasingly pervasive and powerful driving technologies, as in other domains, can blur the boundaries between the human and the technological, posing practical, theoretical, and philosophical issues about safety and performance, which increasingly depend on a complex interaction of driver, in-vehicle technology, and the driving situation (Lees and Lee, 2008). Cognitive engineers face the following challenges: 1. Philosophical issues relate to technologies that generally help but can also interfere with human performance. Driver-assist emergency braking, for example, generally improves crash outcomes, but, in rare instances, can impede a driver's responses. 2. Practical concerns include how to draw meaning from large, complicated streams of sensor data in real time and from petabytes of accumulated data to provide feedback to operators and designers. 3. Theoretical concerns relate to the dynamics of attention and how technologies can affect those dynamics and, generally, how the nature of cognition changes as technology shapes and is shaped by human activity. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Accidents, Occupational Automobiles Electrical Equipment And Supplies Fatigue Nervous System Occupational Health Safety
• Keywords:
  Drivers; Motor vehicles; Accident potential; Automobile safety; Fatigue; Emerging technology; Electronic devices; Cognitive function
• ISBN:
  9780309128216
• Publisher:
  National Academy of Engineering; The National Academies Press
• Document Type:
  Text
• Funding:
  Grant
• Genre:
  Proceedings
• Place as Subject:
  District of Columbia ; Iowa ; OSHA Region 3 ; OSHA Region 7
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  195 pdf pages
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20063363
• Citation:
  Frontiers of engineering: reports on leading-edge engineering from the 2008 symposium. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2009 Mar; :93-102
• Contact Point Address:
  John D. Lee, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2009
• Performing Organization:
  University of Iowa
• Peer Reviewed:
  False
• Start Date:
  20050701
• Source Full Name:
  Frontiers of engineering: reports on leading-edge engineering from the 2008 symposium
• End Date:
  20290630
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:b75c0df59f4cd72f7d53562d69396cd951562231811b72419428abcc953a848a0df2a56524678de33babccf16c3e8da5fd321b5dddc799eda4d79832d5761590
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/231548/cdc_231548_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 3.73 MB ]