Hand-Held texting is less distracting than texting with the phone in a holder: anyway, don't do it

We studied the effects of texting while driving and the effects of mobile phone position (hand-held, holder) on drivers' lane-keeping performance, experienced workload, and in-car glance durations in a motion-platform driving simulator with 24 participants. Overall, we found the known negative effects of texting on lane-keeping performance, workload, and visual attention on road, suggesting that texting on the road in any manner is not risk-free. As a novel finding, we found that hand-held texting led to fewer lane-keeping errors and shorter total glance times off road compared to texting with the phone in a holder. We suggest the explanation is that the drivers had considerably more experience on texting hand-held than texting with the phone in a holder. In addition, the instability caused by the movements of the simulator was presumably easier to control while the phone was in hand compared to the holder. Surprisingly, there was a significant inverse correlation between the distance of the phone from the driving scene and total in-car glance duration as well as the number of in-car glances. The finding suggests that the participants made more inefficient but brief in-car glances towards the phone when the phone was closer to the driving scene than farther apart. The findings should be considered when planning legislation and designing novel in-car touch screen based interaction methods to replace interactions with mobile phones while driving.