Effects of display position of a visual in-vehicle task on simulated driving

To determine the relative safety of onboard display positions while driving, participants performed a lane-keeping task in a driving simulator. Concurrently, they reacted to a light by pushing the brake pedal. A secondary task was projected onto a display at one of the seven different locations in the cockpit. Behavioral data, eye movements, and subjective rating scales showed that the manipulation of display information during driving disturbed drivers’ performance exponentially as a function of distance between the line of sight to the outside primary task and the onboard display position. Vertical eccentricity had a greater detrimental effect than horizontal distance. Under a certain condition with a high secondary task load, reaction time of pushing the brake to the outside stimulus nearly doubled with a diagonal eccentricity of 35° as compared to lower eccentricities. Subjective workload measures complement the behavioral data of clear detrimental effects with eccentricities of at least 35°.