Voice-guided vehicles distracting

As voice-guided driving becomes more commonplace, a new study shows that adding a personal voice to vehicles can actually cause more accidents.

Researchers from Michigan State University, Eindhoven University of Technology and Stanford University conducted an experiment by designing a car simulator. The car featured an Oculus Rift virtual reality headset, a steering wheel and foot pedals. Study participants were asked to select a car that they felt best represented their identity from a range of options. They were also required to rate five available voices based on their perception of friendliness, human likeness, similarity and intelligence. Study participants were told they would be randomly assigned a voice, but were actually given either the most similar or dissimilar voice from their rating. 

During the driving simulation, participants were more likely to crash when they perceived the instructor’s voice to be similar to their own or when they felt the car’s appearance reflected their identity. Researchers say this suggests that having too strong a social or personal connection with the virtual driving instructor is distracting and therefore hinders safe driving.

The study authors say that limited research has examined the effects of virtual voices on driving performance but that many studies have examined how the interactions beween people and embodied technolgies, such as computer agents or avatars, can influence humans. They also say there is a huge body of research on social presence in mediated and unmediated contexts but that this study merges these lines of research in a new way.

“Autonomous and quasi-autonomous cars offer new modes of communication between humans and technology. Research on these modes of communication may yield new theoretical insights about human-computer interaction in general,” said Rabindra Ratan of Michigan State.

“This research suggests that the development of autonomous and quasi-autonomous cars should consider the ways in which the voices integrated into these technologies influence the driver and thus safety on the road,” he said.