Young drivers’ takeover time in a conditional automated vehicle: The effects of hand-held mobile phone use and future intentions to use automated vehicles
DOI: 10.1016/j.trf.2021.01.012
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Summary
This study investigates the impact of hand-held mobile phone use on young drivers’ ability to take back control of a conditional automated vehicle (Level 3 automation) and examines how simulator exposure influences their future intentions to use such technology. Motivated by the high prevalence of mobile phone use among young drivers (aged 17–25) and their overrepresentation in traffic crashes, the research addresses a gap in literature regarding takeover performance during specific handheld non-driving related tasks (NDRTs). Additionally, it applies the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) to assess whether experiencing automated driving functions alters predictors of intended AV use, such as attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioural control, and trust. The study employed a within-groups experimental design using a high-fidelity driving simulator. Thirty-three young Australian drivers completed pre- and post-drive questionnaires and participated in two 15-minute simulator drives. During the drives, participants engaged in six takeover events triggered by auditory and visual warnings. These events occurred while participants were performing one of four NDRTs: reading/sending text messages, talking on the phone, using social media, or completing an auditory working memory n-back task. Two additional events served as control conditions where participants monitored the road environment without secondary tasks. Dependent measures included takeover reaction time and vehicle lateral position. Self-report measures assessed TPB constructs and trust before and after the simulation. Contrary to the hypothesis that handheld mobile phone use would impair takeover performance, results showed no significant differences in reaction times or lateral vehicle control across any of the task conditions. Reaction times ranged from 2.92 seconds (monitoring) to 3.72 seconds (social media), with no statistical significance found between mobile phone tasks, the cognitive n-back task, or the monitoring condition. Regarding behavioural intentions, hierarchical regression analyses revealed that while TPB constructs significantly predicted intentions at baseline, post-drive experiences significantly increased participants’ ratings of subjective norms (approval from important others) and perceived behavioural control (controllability). Trust also emerged as a significant predictor of intentions post-drive, a relationship not significant pre-drive. The findings suggest that, in this simulator context, young drivers’ takeover times were not negatively affected by common handheld mobile phone activities compared to cognitive tasks or monitoring. This challenges previous assumptions that visual-manual distractions always degrade takeover performance in conditional automation. Furthermore, the study highlights the critical role of social influence and perceived control in shaping young drivers’ acceptance of automated vehicles. Exposure to automated driving functions appears to strengthen the influence of subjective norms and trust on future usage intentions, indicating that real-world or simulated experience may shift the psychological predictors of AV adoption among young drivers.
Provenance
The full processing record for this entry. Every stage of this paper's journey through the pipeline is logged — what ran, with which tool and model, how many attempts it took, and when it last completed.
| Stage | Outcome | Tool | Model | Prompt | Attempts | Completed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| discover | success | Crossref | — | — | 1 | 2026-08-09 |
| archive | success | semantic_scholar | — | — | 6 | 2026-08-09 |
| extract | success | cached | — | — | 3 | 2026-08-10 |
| clean | success | clean | — | — | 1 | 2026-08-09 |
| chunk | success | chunk | — | — | 1 | 2026-08-09 |
| embed | success | embed | Qwen/Qwen3-Embedding-8B | — | 1 | 2026-08-09 |
| enrich | success | semantic_scholar | — | — | 1 | 2026-08-09 |
| promote | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-08-09 |
| summarize | success | llm | qwen3.6-27b-nvidia | summ-v5 | 2 | 2026-08-10 |
| tag | success | vector_similarity | — | — | 10 | 2026-08-11 |
| verify | success | — | — | — | 2 | 2026-08-10 |
Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-nvidia on 2026-08-10; verification: verified.
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- Empirical Findings: behavioral performance data, observational prevalence, self report data