Iran Occupational Health http://ioh.iums.ac.ir Iran Occupational Health. 2020 (18 Apr);17:5. Original Article Survey of effect of reading and texting the short message on performance and mental workload of young drivers Akbar Ehdasi, MSc in Occupational Health, Department of Occupational Health Engineering, School of Public Health, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran Reza Yeganeh, MSc in Occupational Health, Department of Occupational Health Engineering, School of Public Health, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran Agha Fatemeh Hosseini, Lecturer of Biostatistics, Department of Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran Iraj Alimohammadi, (*Corresponding author) Associate Professor in Occupational Health,Occupational Health Research Center, Department of Occupational Health Engineering, School of Public Health, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran. alimohammadi.i@iums.ac.ir Abstract Background and aims: Road accident is one of the main causes of death and disabilities in the world. According to WHO reports, nearly 1.2 million deaths and 50 million injuries occur from road accidents in the world annually (5). The three factors, namely road, vehicle, and human factors, have an essential role in driving accidents. Officials estimate that %90 of the driving accidents in the world are related to human factors, and in the Islamic Republic of Iran, this figure is %75. %25 of road accidents are linked to the quality of roads and vehicles (6). Some studies have shown that a very low or a very high level of mental workload could influence perception, attention, and information processing deficiency (7- 11). For example, it has been found that driver distraction could cause %23 accidents leading to injuries, and %27 accidents leading to death in 2004 in Japan (12). Drivers' mental workload is needed to be determined (13). Human errors could occur when a high mental workload is needed to perform the tasks. When mental workload would be more than personal cognitive capacity, the probability of human errors enhances (4). Using a mobile phone while driving can increase the mental workload level of drivers. Iran national law forbids using a mobile phone while driving. Some studies have shown that, when writing messages, the line of sight of youth novice diverts from the road more than 400% than when no writing message (22, 21). A few researches have shown that youth drivers write messages more than older ones (21). Young drivers are also more likely to be engaged in such activities than old ones (21). Nam et al. reported that the use of mobile phones, especially texting while driving, indicates an increased safety risk (21). So far, few studies have been conducted on driving performance using driving simulators in Iran. There is also no comprehensive study on the impact of writing text messages on driving performance in Iran. This study aims to determine the effect of reading and writing text messages on driving performance and mental workload of young drivers. Methods: This interventional study was conducted on 40 male and female drivers. The target population was young drivers (19 to 29 years) in Tehran. We used a half-body Pride manufactured by the specialists of the virtual reality group of Khajeh Nasir Tusi Industrial University. The IWS scale was used to measure the self-report mental workload. IWS is a unidimensional scale developed in 2005 by Pickup et al. It has nine levels to describe the mental workload. Each level on the scale is marked with one color (18). The visual acuity of the drivers was first checked using the Snellen Test. After that, they filled out a demographic questionnaire including questions on age, gender, year of obtaining the driving license, number of times they drove per week, and driving simulator experiment. Finally, the drivers had to drive a 10-kilometer along the simulated highway. Results: A Paired t-test was used to compare the values of normal variables for both texting and not texting; and Wilcoxon nonparametric test for non-normal variables. The results are given in Table 2. According to the results, the three variables of the study were statistically significant (p<0.05) for texting and for not texting. The mean values of vehicle lateral deviation, reaction time, and IWS scale were 26.68 cm, 502.13 ms, and 2.02, respectively, in the normal driving phase, and 53.04 cm, 652.12 ms, and 6, respectively, in the texting and Keywords Reading and texting the short message Performance of driving Mental workload Reaction time Received: 15/06/2018 Published: 18/04/2020 ID Downloaded from ioh.iums.ac.ir at 7:45 IRST on Monday November 29th 2021