Driver Safety Might Improve by Showing Cell Phone Callers The Road

Showing a caller views of the driver and the road ahead might reduce cell phone distraction for the driver, a new study suggests.

By using a driving simulator and video phones, researchers were able to examine how a driver's conversation partner, either on the phone or in the car, could affect their safety while on the road.

At any given time, around 5 percent of drivers in the U.S. are using their cell phone devices. The devices are cited as a cause of distraction in 18 percent of crashes, according to the study.

"For a number of years, we've been thinking about 'how might we make a cell phone partner - that is someone who is speaking to a driver who might be using legally a hands free cell phone, more like a passenger'," Arthur Kramer said to Reuters Health in an email.

Kramer, who led the study, is director of the Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

"Because we know in the great majority of studies, the passengers, at least adult passengers who are drivers themselves, tend to be useful to drivers - it's another pair of eyes, and experienced eyes, if it's another driver," he added.

Kramer said he and his colleagues thought it could be interesting to give the conversation partner at home or in any location similar information to what a specific passenger sitting in the vehicle would have, using a video-capable smartphone.

"And that's what we did, we provided essentially a split screen video of the driver's face and outside the windscreen," Kramer said.

Kramer and his colleagues created the study in order to see if the video information could make the conversation partner more like a passenger inside the vehicle.

They found 48 enrolled college students who had two or more years of driving experience and set up four different driving scenarios: the driver alone in the simulator, the driver speaking to a passenger who was also in the simulator, the driver speaking on a hands-free cell phone to someone in a different location and the driver speaking on a hands-free cell phone to someone who could see the driver and the driving scene out the front windshield with a video phone, according to Reuters.

The study team notes in Psychological Science that drivers were least likely to remember which road signs they had seen when they drove alone, compared to having a passenger or being on either type of cell-phone call.

Researchers also analyzed conversations between drivers and either the callers or passenger.

"We found when the individuals at home or somewhere else had the split screen video they behaved, in terms of how they used language, more like the passenger," Kramer said. "That is, they were able to stop speaking when they perceived the driver was being busy."

Kramer said that cell phone partners with video would also be able to reference driving events like bicyclists or cars nearby, much like a normal passenger would be able to do.

He is "cautiously optimistic," but still things talking on a phone while driving, even hands free, is a "stupid thing to do." He isn't sure the video technology would be useful for teens, who might just find it more distracting.

"I don't want to encourage more people to use the cell phone when they're driving but since it is indeed legal in every state in the United States, this could be one way to reduce accidents," he said.

The study was just a simulation, so it isn't clear how the technology would impact drivers in the real world.

Arthur Goodwin, a researcher with the Highway Safety Research Center at the University of North Carolina, thinks it's an interesting study that also shows just how helpful passengers are for drivers.

Studies show that adult drivers "are less likely to be involved in a crash if they have a passenger with them, but we don't necessarily know why that's the case," Goodwin, who wasn't involved in the new study, said to Reuters Health.

"These findings suggest that passengers do pay attention to what drivers are doing and will adjust their own behavior accordingly, either by mentioning things that might be happening on the roadway or perhaps talking a little bit less than they normally would compared to somebody else who's on a cell phone," Goodwin added.