Abstract: To investigate the influence of the use of in-vehicle information devices on driving behavior, driving distraction experiments were performed by using a virtual driving simulation platform, a key press type radio, and a touch panel radio among others. In order to evaluate psychological resources driving distraction demands and the impact on driving performance, the driver response time, the target hit rate, the vehicle speed variation and the car following distance were measured with PDT. The results show that the use of in-vehicle information device can decrease the driver's response capacity and driving performance, that for a given driver, the response time measured when he or she drives and makes use of the touch panel is 167 ms longer than that measured when he or she drives and makes use of the key-press type, and the PDT target hit rate is 10% lower, that the use of the touch panel also has a pronounced influence on the speed maintenance and car following maintenance capacity, and that the use of the vehicle information device with touch panel requires more psychological resources, and decreases reaction on both sides of the field of view of information stimulation, therefore the use of the touch panel has a significantly negative influence on the driving safety.

Key words: driving distraction, peripheral detection task(PDT), response time, in-vehicle information device, driving performance