Effects of In-Vehicle Navigational Display Modality on Situational Awareness and Driving Performance

Interaction with secondary devices such as in-vehicle navigation system (IVNS) while driving has been reported to distract the driver from the driving task. There have been few studies investigating the distracting effect of IVNS on driving performance and situation awareness. However, the potential impact of distraction from display modality types of IVNS on SA remains under-researched. Therefore, this study aims to address this gap. This study investigates the effect of in-vehicle navigation display modality on situational awareness and driving performance. Ten male students (mean age of 21.3 ± 0.3 years) participated in this study. They performed three 15 min driving simulation tasks following the routes provided by an IVNS. For each task, the navigational instruction was provided either using a visual-only, auditory-only, or combined audiovisual display. The results demonstrate that participants had higher situational awareness when the navigational instruction was provided using the auditory-only and combined audiovisual modality compared to visual-only modality. Participants also showed a lower risky driving behavior score when the navigational instruction was provided using the combined audiovisual modality. These findings suggest that the combined audiovisual provides a potentially significant safety enhancement during driving.