ABSTRACT
Human Factors, as a discipline, largely focuses on the application of methodologies to solve practical problems (Stanton et al., 2013). Human Factors methods have traditionally been applied to four main areas: design, training, safety assessment and accident investigation (Cacciabue, 2013). This has enabled the application of Human Factors to many safety critical domains, such as aviation (Plant & Stanton, 2016), healthcare (Reason, 1995), maritime (Baber et al., 2013), rail (Stanton & Walker, 2011) and road transport (Stanton & Salmon, 2009). Human Factors has long been concerned with the recognition, assessment and analysis of error and its relationship to incidents (Reason, 1990). Within the road transport domain, there is a suggestion that the view of error causation and management may be lagging behind other domains, such as aviation (Stanton & Salmon, 2009; Salmon et al., 2010). This is attributed to a lack of appropriate methods to measure and classify the errors that are made within the road transport domain which, in turn, results in a lack of understanding for the causal factors that lead to error (Stanton & Salmon, 2009). This chapter will introduce the current state of understanding on driver distraction including the current issues in defining the behaviour and its multiple sources. The technological sources of distraction are then given in more detail, as this is the main focus of the book. The rapid advancement of in-vehicle technology has had large-scale implications for the issue of driver distraction (Harvey & Stanton, 2013). These are discussed with regard to the legislation that is currently in place to manage the issue. The crash statistics that strive to determine the magnitude of the issue and the design guidelines that have been established to regulate the distractive effects of technologies within the vehicle. Finally, the sociotechnical systems approach is expanded on and the benefits that it can have to the study of driver distraction from technological sources of distraction in the vehicle are discussed.
