Belt Up: Investigating the impact of in-vehicular conversation on driving performance

In-vehicle conversations are typical when there is more than one person in the car. Although many conversations are beneficial in keeping the driver alert and active, there are also instances where a competitive conversation may adversely influence driving performance. Identifying such scenarios can improve vehicle safety systems by fusing the knowledge obtained from conversational speech analysis and vehicle dynamic signals. In this study we incorporate the use of smart portable devices to create a unified platform for recording in-vehicular conversations as well as the vehicle dynamic signals required to evaluate the driving performance. Results show that turn taking rate and overlapping speech segments under certain conditions correlate with deviations from normal driving patterns. The conversational speech analysis can thus be utilized as a component in driver assistance systems such that the impact of in-vehicle speech activity on driving performance is controlled or minimized.