Does gender make a difference to performing in-vehicle tasks?

This study describes the gender differences in driving and visual behaviour observed under a high mental workload. The impacts of performing a set of in-vehicle auditory tasks on the behaviour of 34 drivers were studied in an on-road experiment using an instrumented vehicle. The results show that female participants tended to drive more attentively in baseline driving than males, but they were also more affected by the higher workload. The latter effect was identified by an increase in steering wheel adjustments and a slightly lower auditory task performance. Females adopted a more conservative coping strategy to compensate for the higher workload, as identified by increased headways and more stable lateral control. By contrast, male drivers did not appear to be affected in the same way, but their eye movements revealed significant gaze concentration and less mirror-checking. This suggests that male drivers may be less aware of the impact of mental distractions on their driving performance and visual behaviour, and adopt a simplification strategy to cope with the extra workload. These gender differences in behaviours and coping strategies can be explained only through a combination of traditional measurements and drivers´ eye movements, which provide a supplementary measure for understanding driving behaviour. Increased understandings of such gender differences may have significant implications for the design and safe operation of future in-vehicle technologies.