Transportation Safety &

Distracted Driving
Meagan Larrea
Graduate Student
University of Idaho

My engineering disciplines
Civil

engineering

Design, construct, and maintain the physical

and naturally built environment
Examples: Roads, bridges, buildings
Transportation

engineering

The safe and efficient movement of people and

goods
Examples: Design, operations, planning

What is driver distraction?

Diminished

attention from the driving task

In-vehicle devices, passengers, eating,
cognitive distraction

From: autos.aol.com/gallery/driverdistractions/

THERE ARE
THREE MAIN
TYPES
OF DISTRACTION
Manual
Visual
Cognitive

THERE ARE
THREE MAIN
TYPES
OF DISTRACTION
Manual
Visual
Cognitive

THERE ARE
THREE MAIN
TYPES
OF DISTRACTION
Manual
Visual
Cognitive

Activity 1: Divided Attention

Count

and record the number of passes that

the basketball team in white makes. This is a
challenging task, it will require most of your
attention, if you focus you should be
successful.

Driver Distraction
Impacts

Driver response time and following distance

(Strayer & Drews, 2004)

Ability to attend to roadway hazards

(Fisher et al., 2002)

Injuries

crashes

and fatalities from motor vehicle

Worldwide: 3000 fatalities/day

(Peden et al, 2004)

US: No. 1 cause of death among individuals

aged 4 to 34 (Subramanian, 2006)

Age-related differences in crash rates

From: www.asaging.org/cdc/module4/phase1/phase1_1b.cfm

Quantify driver performance

Control:

Steering, speeding, and braking

Physiological: Heart rate variability
Behavior: Eye tracking patterns
Perceptions: Surveys
Heart rate monitor

Conclusions

Acknowledgements
Contact:
Meagan Larrea
Graduate Student
University of Idaho
Email: larr0162@vandals.uidaho.edu