Do In-Car Voice-Enabled Devices Distract Drivers?
The End of the Road?
While the speech industry, automakers, and AAA hash things out, people are ultimately voting with their wallets. Recent research from J.D. Power has found that while consumers are expressing an interest in speech-connected cars, they are frustrated with voice recognition systems because they don't always perform according to user expectations and don't allow people to speak in a normal voice.
"There's a belief that voice is an enabler that allows interactions but minimizes the amount of distraction while driving," says Mike VanNieuwkuyk, executive director of global automotive research at J.D. Power. "But consumers are largely frustrated with voice recognition or activation, [saying] that 'It doesn't understand me, so it doesn't recognize what I'm saying or can't understand my dialect or has trouble dealing with ambient noise.'"
Schalk says that clearly there is room for much improvement for in-car speech systems. "People who aren't accustomed to these systems don't know what to say," adds Schalk. "Things fall apart when the recognizer hears unexpected things."
Going forward, AAA is carrying out more research. AAA's McNaull said that the organization conducted a second phase of its research with the University of Utah and will release those findings in November. This study targets functionalities of in-car speech recognition systems used for social media and navigation activities. "We're trying to see more specifically what the cognitive demands are on drivers when they engage in these tasks."
Additionally, the second phase of research will examine the impact of differences between synthetic speech and natural speech to gauge the cognitive demand on drivers. "There's been great improvements in what text-to-voice sounds like, but there's still artificiality in what we end up hearing," McNaull says, further explaining that researchers are trying to understand if using machine voices is more cognitively challenging than speech that sounds closer to a human voice.
"We know that there have been real strides in the way voice-to-text is able to differentiate between homophones and some other challenges, yet the systems are still not perfect," McNaull says. "If we were to get into a spot of having perfect systems, would we have better results?"
Even prior to releasing its research findings, in meetings with automakers and trade associations as well as with the consumer electronics and wireless industry, AAA found varying degrees of receptiveness. "We wanted to initiate a dialogue within the industry and [with] stakeholders, legislators, and policymakers about these technologies and find ways to determine what the appropriate balance is between connectivity and safety, and ensure that we're not having people injured or killed on the roadway simply because our desire to be connected has exceeded our responsibility for safe use of technology," McNaull says. "We want to make sure that we're going to use this technology with our eyes wide open and our brains fully engaged."
Miller states that because of AAA's findings, there could be calls to ban all voice-activated services. In fact, according to McNaull, California legislators introduced a bill this year that would have expanded the texting ban it has in place to include voice-activated texting. The bill did not pass.
"The question going forward for car designers, policymakers, and drivers alike is 'Knowing what we know about safety, where do you place limits on what individuals can do with their voice in cars?'" Miller says."To outlaw using speech-enabled systems would be wrong...and regulators need to decide what's permissible."
Staff Writer Michele Masterson can be reached at mmasterson@infotoday.com.
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