Gaming to Safety Exploring Feedback Gamification for Mitigating Driver Distraction

• Published in: Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting Vol. 60; no. 1; pp. 1884 - 1888
• Main Authors: Xie, Jeanne Y., Chen, Huei-Yen Winnie, Donmez, Birsen
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.09.2016
• ISSN: 2169-5067; 1071-1813; 2169-5067
• DOI: 10.1177/1541931213601429

The risk of crash or near-crash significantly increases when drivers make long off-road glances to engage in distracting tasks. Providing drivers with feedback that integrates elements of game design could increase driver motivation for adopting safer behaviors. In an ongoing between-subjects simulator study with young drivers (n=29 reported in this paper), we compare four conditions for off-road glance behaviors: no feedback, real-time feedback system, post-drive feedback system (real-time feedback + post-drive feedback), and gamification feedback system (real-time feedback + post-drive feedback + game design elements). Shorter average glance duration and less frequent risky (≥2 s) glances to an in-vehicle display were observed for the post-drive system, compared to no feedback and real-time feedback, and for the gamification system, compared to no feedback. Although no added benefit of gamification over the post-drive feedback system was observed for these eye glance metrics, longer-term exposure and assessment could show improvements to be more stable with the inclusion of game design elements.