Scrolling and driving: how an MP3 player and its aftermarket controller affect driving performance and visual behavior.

Objective: The aim of this study was to assess how scrolling through playlists on an MP3 player or its aftermarket controller affects driving performance and to examine how drivers adapt device use to driving demands.

Background: Drivers use increasingly complex infotainment devices that can undermine driving performance. The goal activation hypothesis suggests that drivers might fail to compensate for these demands, particularly with long tasks and large search set sizes.

Method: A total of 50 participants searched for songs in playlists of varying lengths using either an MP3 player or an aftermarket controller while negotiating road segments with traffic and construction in a medium-fidelity driving simulator.

Results: Searching through long playlists (580 songs) resulted in poor driving performance and required more long glances (longer than 2 s) to the device compared with other playlist lengths. The aftermarket controller also led to more long glances compared with the MP3 player. Drivers did not adequately adapt their behavior to roadway demand, as evident in their degraded driving performance. No significant performance differences were found between short playlists, the radio-tuning task, and the no-task condition.

Conclusion: Selecting songs from long playlists undermined driving performance, and drivers did not sufficiently adapt their use of the device to the roadway demands, consistent with the goal activation hypothesis. The aftermarket controller degraded rather than enhanced performance.

Application: Infotainment systems should support drivers in managing distraction. Aftermarket controllers can have the unintended effect of making devices carried into the car less compatible with driving.These results can motivate development of new interfaces as alternatives to scrolling lists.