Tesla drivers have trouble following the old adage, "Keep your eyes on the road," when the car's autopilot is activated, a new study found.
The findings are not surprising but could be a troubling sign of more distracted driving ahead, according to CarBuzz.
The findings come as Volvo announced it will be equipping vehicles with technology to reduce driver distraction. Other automakers such as Mercedes-Benz are putting in "giant touchscreens," offering information to the driver. When you add smartphones to the mix, distracted driving is a "silent epidemic" that needs to be addressed.
The Tesla study was done by researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). They distinguished between drivers taking their eyes off the road to look at the car's instruments and those who were looking at the area where the touchscreens are located.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration advises drivers not to take their eyes off the road for more than two seconds, according to CarBuzz. But the MIT study fund that Tesla drivers were sometimes looking away for longer than two seconds. The study indicated that "non-driving glances" sometimes exceeded five seconds.
Drivers tended to be more likely to look away for longer when autopilot was on, the study found. With autopilot on, 22% of non-driving glances lasted more than two seconds, compared to only 4% when autopilot was off, CarBuzz reported.
"This is the first time we can quantify the effects of automation, in this case specifically Tesla Autopilot, on how drivers pay attention," Pnina Gershon, a research scientist at MIT and a coauthor of the study, told CarBuzz.
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