What are Australian drivers doing behind the wheel? An overview of secondary task data from the Australian Naturalistic Driving Study
DOI: 10.33492/jacrs-d-18-00085
archive: archived pipeline: cataloged verified
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Summary
This study investigates the prevalence, types, and safety implications of secondary task engagement among Australian drivers using data from the Australian Naturalistic Driving Study (ANDS). Motivated by the significant role distracted driving plays in fatal and serious injury crashes, the research aims to provide a comprehensive overview of non-driving tasks beyond mobile phone use, which has been the primary focus of previous naturalistic studies. The study seeks to determine how frequently drivers engage in these tasks, the duration of engagement, and the association with safety-related incidents, thereby informing targeted countermeasures and policies. The methodology involved analyzing video and sensor data from 379 drivers across 346 privately owned vehicles in New South Wales and Victoria. Vehicles were equipped with Data Acquisition Systems and multi-camera video recording equipment, capturing approximately 1.95 million kilometers of driving over four months. Researchers randomly selected 185 trips (2,592 minutes of driving) from the dataset for manual coding. Two analysts coded secondary task events, defined as discretionary tasks performed concurrently with driving that are not critical to vehicle control. Variables included task type, passenger presence, driving context (moving vs. stationary), and safety-related incidents. A modified SHRP2 coding protocol classified 29 types of secondary tasks, ranging from adjusting vehicle controls to mobile phone use and interacting with passengers. The results indicate that secondary task engagement is frequent, with drivers initiating a task every 96 seconds on average. A total of 1,603 secondary task events were identified. Drivers were significantly more likely to initiate tasks when the vehicle was stationary, with an incidence rate 47% higher per minute of driving when stopped compared to moving. However, in absolute terms, nearly three-quarters of tasks were initiated while moving. Drivers demonstrated some self-regulation by limiting the duration of high-risk tasks, such as mobile phone use, when the vehicle was in motion. Despite this, 5.9% of secondary task events were associated with safety-related incidents, including lane excursions, failure to yield, and poor situation awareness. Mobile phone use accounted for 7.4% of tasks but was associated with 23.2% of incidents. Reaching for objects and personal hygiene tasks also contributed significantly to incident rates. The findings highlight that while drivers exhibit some self-regulatory behaviors, such as waiting until stationary to initiate tasks or shortening task duration while moving, they still frequently engage in high-risk activities. The study concludes that countermeasures should extend beyond mobile phone enforcement to address non-technology-based tasks like reaching for objects, which are common and carry high crash risk. The authors suggest that driver education programs could leverage natural self-regulatory tendencies to mitigate distraction risks. Additionally, improved enforcement of hand-held phone laws through automated cameras is recommended. The study underscores the value of naturalistic driving data in understanding real-world driver behavior and provides a foundation for future research on the full duration of task engagement and its interaction with dynamic driving contexts.
Provenance
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| Stage | Outcome | Tool | Model | Prompt | Attempts | Completed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| discover | success | Crossref | — | — | 1 | 2026-08-09 |
| archive | success | canonical_url | — | — | 1 | 2026-08-09 |
| extract | success | pdftotext | — | — | 4 | 2026-08-10 |
| clean | success | clean | — | — | 2 | 2026-08-10 |
| chunk | success | chunk | — | — | 2 | 2026-08-10 |
| embed | success | embed | Qwen/Qwen3-Embedding-8B | — | 2 | 2026-08-10 |
| promote | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-08-09 |
| summarize | success | llm | qwen3.6-27b-nvidia | summ-v5 | 2 | 2026-08-10 |
| tag | success | vector_similarity | — | — | 17 | 2026-08-11 |
| verify | partial | — | — | — | 2 | 2026-08-10 |
Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-nvidia on 2026-08-10; verification: verified_with_issues.
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- Empirical Findings: observational prevalence, behavioral performance data
- Methodological Resource: dataset resource