The goal of the SIMSI (Safe In-vehicle Multimodal Speech Interaction) project is threefold. Firstly, to integrate a dialogue system for menu-based dialogue with a GUI-driven in-vehicle infotainment system. Secondly, to further improve the integrated system with respect to driver distraction, thus making the system safer to use while driving. Thirdly, to verify that the resulting system decrease...

OBJECTIVE There is an increase in electronic advertising billboards along major roads, which may cause driver distraction due to the highly conspicuous design of the electronic billboards. Yet limited research on the impact of electronic billboards on driving performance and driver behavior is available. The Swedish Transport Administration recently approved the installation of 12 electronic bi...

BACKGROUND The objective was to examine the changes in neuroforaminal height at L4-L5 and L5-S1 after insertion and graduated foraminal distraction using the 2 level transsacral implant in a cadaveric model. METHODS Discectomy and transsacral instrumentation was performed in six fresh human cadavers at L4-S1. The neuroforaminal height was measured at L4-L5 and L5-S1 before and after insertion...

Strategies to contend with driver distraction may no longer be sufficient for the emerging variety of contemporary driver distractions. A more systematic and systemic approach holds promise for improved road safety but is not currently being developed. This systematic review of multiple driver distractions aims to address this gap and presents two key findings. Systematic classification of dist...

The U.S. railroad system is made up of over 700 railroads operating on 140,000 miles of track, with more than 130,000 at-grade public railway-highway crossings, or intersections in which any part of a roadway intersects with railroad tracks. Safety at these railroad-highway grade crossings and the related traffic control devices used to communicate with drivers is of major concern. There are th...

Once the domain of purely physical controls such as knobs, levers, buttons, and sliders, the vehicle dash is rapidly transforming into a computer interface. This presents a challenge for drivers, because the physics-based cues which make traditional controls easy to operate with limited visual confirmation are absent on traditional screens. We investigate the addition of programmable physics-ba...

In contrast to the vast amount of modeling work focused on desktop user interfaces, recent work has increasingly focused on “off-the-desktop” interfaces, one prime example being in-vehicle interfaces used while driving. This paper highlights four recent approaches to predicting driver distraction from in-vehicle interfaces as secondary tasks: hand-crafted modeling with the full-fledged ACT-R ar...

Driver distraction is a topic of considerable interest, with the public debate centering on the use of cell phones and texting while driving. However, the driver distraction/overload issue is really much larger. It concerns specific tasks such as entering destinations on navigation systems, retrieving songs on MP3 players, accessing web pages, checking stocks, editing spreadsheets, and performi...