Different forms of attentional disturbances involved in driving accidents

Attentional processes are necessary for any complex activity, such as driving. When a driver´s attention is not optimal, driving errors can arise. The aim of this study is to highlight the involvement of attentional problems and their weight in accident production, using data from in-depth accident analyses. Three attentional disturbances are distinguished according to the task that competes with the driving activity: inattention, attention competition and distraction. Inattention is the defect most frequently represented (74%) compared with attention competition (18%) and distraction (8%). Overall, attentional disturbances mainly lead to detection failures (44.7%). In more than half of the cases, other factors are required for a driving error to emerge. The interest of studying human failures linked to attentional disturbances is that it provides a definition of driver´s needs in terms of assistance, thus identifying which systems are the most relevant and, on the contrary, which might reduce the attention capacities required for driving.