Iran Occupational Health

Background and aims: Increasing use of cell phone while driving is actually part of a disturbing trend of technological impact on reducing the driver's attention. Using the phone during driving increase crash probability between 3 to 6.5 times. Cell Phone may deviate drivers’ attention of the driving and it lead to a reduction in driver's situation awareness. The present study investigated the impact of Cell Phone on driver’s situation awareness and brake reaction time. Materials and

Methods: For performing this study, 31 bus drivers drove in the bus driving simulator. Drivers’ situational awareness was measured by situation awareness global assessment technique. Gold Directed Task Analysis method used to analysis of driver’s cognitive tasks. The simulator was automatically recorded braking reaction time of the subjects.

Results: Results showed that all levels of drivers’ situation awareness significantly reduced after talking on the cellphone (p<0.001). It also became clear that talking mobile significantly increase drivers’ brake reaction time (p<0.001). Pearson correlation coefficients showed a significant negatively correlation between levels 2 and 3, and total situation awareness and brake reaction time while cellphone conversation (p<0.05).

Conclusion: Overall, this study showed that talking on mobile while driving can be detrimental effect on situation awareness and performance.