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Driven to Distraction Joe Coyne slides into the drivers eat,starts up the car and heads to town.The empty stretch of interstate gives way to urban congestion,and Coyne hits the brakes as a pedestrian suddenly crosses the street in front of him. But even if he hadnt stopped in time,the woman would have been safe.She isnt real.Neither is the town.And Coyne isnt really driving.Coyne is demonstrating a computerized driving simulator that is helping researchers at Old Dominion University examine how in-vehicle guidance systems affect the person behind the wheel. The researchers want to know if such systems,which give audible or written directions,are too distractingor whether any distractions are offset by the benefits drivers get from having help finding their way in unfamiliar locations. Were looking at the performance and mental workload of drivers,said Caryl Baldwin,the assistant psychology professor leading the research,which involves measuring drivers reaction time and brain activity as they respond to auditory and visual cues. The researchers just completed a study of the mental workload involved in driving through different kinds of environments and heavy vs.light traffic.Preliminary results show that as people get into more challenging driving situations,they dont have any extra mental energy to respond to something else in the environment,Baldwin said. | 
