Together Distracted? The Effect of Driver-Passenger Collaboration on Workload, Glance Behavior, and Driving Performance

A main reason of driver distraction is the execution of tertiary driving tasks through an in-vehicle-infotainment system (IVIS). Prior research indicates that input from passengers – especially on tertiary tasks – has the potential to mitigate driver distraction. However, the interplay between driver distraction and driver-passenger collaboration has not been researched in detail. Therefore, we compare five IVIS concepts (single and dual-screen setups) which illustrate different collaborative approaches (Consensual, Token-Ring, Hierarchical, Autocratic, and Anarchic IVIS) with the goal to investigate their effect on drivers’ workload, glance behavior (eyes-off-the-road time) and driving performance (speed, lane position). We found that the most distracting events are when the driver receives pop-up notifications, or when the front-seat passenger interacts with an IVIS screen. Besides that, our insights indicate that despite research-substantiated benefits of dual-screen IVIS setups compared to single-screen ones in terms of collaboration, they have a higher implication on driver distraction and workload.