Effects of using a portable navigation system and paper map in real driving.

Navigation systems are very useful tools because they display a user's location and guide them to a destination using graphics, text and voice information. Recent work has revealed that millions of consumers received driving directions using their cell phone or PDA. This present work aimed to explore whether the efficiency to destination and driver behavior were distinguishable when using a portable navigation system compared to a paper map. Thirty-two subjects were paid to participate in this research, with field experiments being carried out in both urban and rural environments. A smart phone was adopted as the portable navigation system in the study. The results revealed that the drivers performed better when using a portable navigation system compared to those using a paper map, in terms of efficiency to destination and driving performance. In addition, drivers could save time and gasoline using a portable navigation system when in an unfamiliar region, and driving performance may be safer, despite the fact that the display screen of the phone is small.

RCT Entities:   Population Interventions Outcomes