A majority of commuters admit to multitasking on the road, including texting and reading emails, according to new research that reveals the widespread extent of distracted driving.
About 87 percent of commuters are engaged in at least one other activity while driving, like texting, making calls, or listening to podcasts, according to a survey of hundreds of drivers who commute to work each day conducted by a group of interdisciplinary researchers, including Raffaella Sadun, the Charles Edward Wilson Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. Nearly 18 percent of “multitasking” involves reading emails while driving, the findings show.
"We were expecting to see some multitasking in the car, but honestly not to the extent reported in the survey."
“We were expecting to see some multitasking in the car, but honestly not to the extent reported in the survey,” says Sadun. “I suspect this may actually be lower than the true extent of unsafe multitasking, given the fact that not everyone would easily admit to a behavior that is recognized as problematic, if not illegal.”
Almost 43,000 people died in vehicle crashes in the US last year, the most since 2005, according to government estimates. And, in 2020, 3,142 people were killed in car crashes involving distracted drivers.
With automation gaining more momentum, Sadun hopes car designers will double down on safety features. After all, commuters may pay even less attention to the road when they start relying on automated vehicles to navigate for them.
“The risk is that the promise of extensive automation may provide a false sense of security,” says Sadun. “Our findings suggest that some drivers are already easily distracted, and unable to keep a safe level of engagement, even in the absence of a fully automated driverless car.”
The research results, detailed in “Multitasking While Driving: A Time Use Study of Commuting Knowledge Workers to Assess Current and Future Uses,” were published in the June issue of International Journal of Human-Computer Studies. The study was co-written by Sadun, HBS post-doctoral researcher Thomaz Teodorovicz, Andrew Kun of the University of New Hampshire, and Orit Shaer of Wellesley College.
Work vs. personal multitasking
Numerous studies have been conducted over the years, including some by HBS researchers, about the driving habits of commuters and the impact of long commutes on drivers’ work and personal lives. The work-from-anywhere world is changing the landscape of the American commute, as are potential advances in technology that could make cars smarter.
The researchers sought to determine both current and future driving habits of commuters, with an eye on how automated cars might be designed to minimize major accidents. For their time-use study, the researchers conducted online interviews with about 400 knowledge workers, who make up a large percentage of commuters on today’s roadways and whose work often specializes in communicating ideas.
They found that multitasking falls into two broad categories: work and personal. Work-related multitasking occurs more often in the morning as commuters head to the office, and personal-related multitasking occurs more often as commuters head home.
"We are not yet at the point where cars can handle everything—there is still a need for humans to keep engaged and intervene, if needed."
The researchers found that 18 percent of multitasking events involved reading emails, 9.5 percent replying to emails, 7.5 percent making phone calls, 7 percent thinking of work, and 7 percent planning for events, among other survey findings.
Teodorovicz notes that the survey results tend to confirm prior studies that have found commutes in general tend to “crowd out” drivers’ personal time and that commuting times negatively impact people’s well-being and happiness.
Road conditions in the future
Will multitasking remain a concern if such activities occur while someone is transported in an automated car? The answer, the researchers suggest, depends on the level of automation in future cars.
Currently, many cars already have some automated features, such as cruise control, temporary self-steering, and braking sensors. Cars will likely become more automated over time as new technologies and features are introduced, the researchers note.
"There is clearly a lot to do in car design, but perhaps even more broadly, to accommodate the fact that we are now much more likely to be constantly distracted."
But they say a particularly dangerous phase will occur when cars are mostly automated—and yet still require some manual operation by humans or manual overrides in the event of emergencies.
If people are multitasking to a greater extent in semi-automated or even fully automated vehicles, they may not be able to respond adequately in certain situations, the researchers caution.
“While there is a lot of effort currently being spent on the design of safe driverless cars, we are not yet at the point where cars can handle everything—there is still a need for humans to keep engaged and intervene, if needed,” Sadun says.
Potential safety features
Though the paper didn’t fully explore some of the safety features that designers should incorporate into future automated cars, Sadun and Teodorovicz say some features might include putting reading and viewing monitors at eye-level along dashboards and adding more voice-activated controls.
“We need to encourage drivers to keep their eyes on the road and to keep them aware of their car’s surroundings,” says Teodorovicz, emphasizing such concerns are valid even if overall commuting levels decrease in a post-pandemic world.
One of the main takeaways of the study is that knowledge workers are always “on,” as found in past studies. Therefore, their multitasking ways during commutes need to be taken into account when designing automated vehicles, say the authors.
“There is clearly a lot to do in car design, but perhaps even more broadly, to accommodate the fact that we are now much more likely to be constantly distracted by phones, emails, social media, and that, for many, controlling the use of technology in the car is clearly challenging,” says Sadun.
You Might Also Like:
- Commuting Hurts Productivity and Your Best Talent Suffers Most
- Stuck in Commuter Hell? You Can Still Be Productive
- What Companies Want Most in a CEO: A Good Listener
Related reading from the Working Knowledge Archives
Feedback or ideas to share? Email the Working Knowledge team at hbswk@hbs.edu.
Image: iStockphoto