EFFECTS OF CELLULAR TELEPHONE USE WHILE DRIVING BASED ON OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE MENTAL WORKLOAD ASSESSMENT

A series of studies was performed to investigate the effects of cellular telephone use while driving on driver mental workload. In these surveillance studies objective and subjective methods were used to find the driver mental workload behaviour. In the first study, the results indicated that the hands-free system provided less effect on the driver's mental workload than the hand-held system. In the second study, experience in using a cellular telephone while driving had no positive effect on reaction time. The operation task and talking task had little effect on the subjective mental workload of the experienced subjects, but had statistically significant effects on the subjective mental workload of the non-experienced subjects. In the third study, the results of experiment indicated that the telephone tasks increase the mental workload of the drivers as were shown in the second study. The results also indicated that the complex conversation task produced an increase in driver mental workload as compared to the simple conversation task and the other tasks independent of age group.