Effects of simulator practice and real-world experience on cell-phone-related driver distraction

Cooper, JM; Strayer, DL · 2008 · publications_jsonl

DOI: 10.1518/001872008x374983

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Summary

This study investigates whether practice can mitigate the cognitive distraction caused by cell phone use while driving, addressing conflicting findings in existing literature regarding the role of experience and training. While some prior research suggested that repeated exposure might reduce impairment, other studies indicated that dual-task interference persists. The authors aimed to resolve this ambiguity by examining both the effects of simulator-based practice and the influence of real-world cell phone usage habits on driving performance. The researchers employed a mixed within- and between-subject design involving 60 undergraduate drivers selected based on self-reported cell phone usage: 30 with high experience (using phones >41% of driving time) and 30 with low experience (<5% of driving time). Participants completed four 90-minute simulated driving sessions on successive days. The study utilized a high-fidelity driving simulator featuring two distinct environments: a highway scenario requiring speed maintenance and braking responses to a lead vehicle, and a city scenario involving traffic lights, stop signs, and unpredictable hazards like pedestrians and merging vehicles. The experimental design included a practice phase (Days 1–4) with repeated scenarios and a transfer phase involving novel scenarios to assess generalizability. Participants drove under single-task conditions and dual-task conditions involving naturalistic conversation on a hands-free cell phone. Results demonstrated that dual-task performance deficits persisted throughout the practice period and into the transfer condition. Drivers conversing on cell phones exhibited significantly slower brake reaction times, increased following distances, and reduced speed compliance compared to single-task driving. Crucially, these impairments did not diminish with practice; in fact, speed compliance degraded further in repeated scenarios, and reaction times worsened in the novel transfer condition. Furthermore, there was no significant difference in driving impairment between the high-experience and low-experience groups, indicating that real-world familiarity with cell phone use did not moderate the distraction effects. While collision rates decreased slightly during repeated practice, this improvement did not transfer to new scenarios, suggesting participants learned specific hazard locations rather than developing a generalizable skill. The study concludes that practice is unlikely to eliminate the disruptive effects of concurrent cell phone use on driving. The authors attribute this to the unpredictable, dynamic nature of both driving and naturalistic conversation, which prevents the automation of the dual-task combination. These findings challenge the notion that drivers can "learn" to safely multitask in this context and suggest that regulatory restrictions on in-vehicle cell phone use are justified, as neither simulator training nor real-world experience significantly reduces the associated safety risks.

Key finding

Dual-task performance deficits persisted through practice and transfer conditions, with high and low real-world experience groups showing similar driving impairments during hands-free cell phone conversations.

Methodology

simulator

Sample size: 60

Provenance

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Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-nvidia on 2026-08-10; verification: verified.

Topics

Ranked by relevance to this paper. Hover a topic for its definition.

• mobile phones
• simulator training transfer
• manual
• distraction laws
• visual manual
• auditory

Information type

What kind of knowledge this paper contributes, grouped by family — independent of topic (what it is about) and method (how it was studied).

• Empirical Findings: observational prevalence, behavioral performance data
• Theoretical Contribution: computational model