Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effects of visual information complexity(manipulated by the number of information items) of In-Vehicle Navigation System on driver`s visual search and driving performances. Two experiments were conducted. In Experiment 1, where the effects of the system use itself on driving performances were primarily examined, drivers in the system use condition showed more lane crossings than control condition. The effect of visual information complexity was investigated in the Experiment 2. The drivers` visual search time was increased as the number of the items on the screen increased. In addition, similar to the result of Experiment 1, drivers` lane crossings were as the number of items increased. However, longitudinal control of the vehicle(i.e., deviation from the target driving speed) appeared to be not affected either by the complexity of the information or the system use itself. Implications from the integrated analysis of the two experiments were discussed in terms of the guideline for the design of the In-Vehicle Navigation System.