What do you do? An analysis of non-driving related activities during a 60 minutes conditionally automated highway drive

Abstract

Conditionally automated driving (CAD) allows the driver to deal with non-driving related activities (NDRA) whenever the automation is active. We have analyzed video data from a one hour driving simulator study with free naturalistic NDRA. Most time was spent watching videos on a pre-installed tablet, looking at the surrounding traffic and landscape, listening to music and using the phone for multiple activities. The latter was undertaken by 75% of the participants, followed by reading books and magazines (60%) and browsing the tablet (50%). There was a wide variety of observed activities and also a high variance in both total time spent on such activities and their mean duration. Participants engaged in NDRA about 2 min after switching on the automation. Older participants spent significantly more time looking at the surrounding traffic and less time using their phone or playing video games.