A Comparison of the Effect of Mobile Phone Use and Alcohol Consumption on Driving Simulation Performance

Abstract

Objective: The present study compared the effects of a variety of mobile phone usage conditions to different levels of alcohol intoxication on simulated driving performance and psychomotor vigilance.Methods: Twelve healthy volunteers participated in a crossover design in which each participant completed a simulated driving task on 2 days, separated by a 1-week washout period. On the mobile phone day, participants performed the simulated driving task under each of 4 conditions: no phone usage, a hands-free naturalistic conversation, a hands-free cognitively demanding conversation, and texting. On the alcohol day, participants performed the simulated driving task at four different blood alcoho..