Young Driver Distraction by Text Messaging: A Comparison of the Effects of Reading and Texting in Chinese Versus English

Reading and writing text messages while driving causes remarkable impairments in driving performance, and is prohibited in many jurisdictions. Hong Kong is a bilingual society and both written Chinese and English are popular languages in daily life. As the input methods of Chinese and English vary considerably, the aim of this study was to examine the effect of reading and writing Chinese and English text messages on driving performance using a driving simulator approach. In particular, the authors analyzed the differences in reaction times for (1) reading versus writing text messages; (2) reading and texting Chinese versus English messages under different driving scenarios; and (3) all possible combinations of scenarios and conditions. Thirty participants were involved in the proposed driving simulator experiments. The results indicated that the reaction times under all distraction conditions, both reading and writing text messages in Chinese and English, were significantly higher than those under the no distraction condition. The reaction times when writing Chinese text messages, which involve a more complicated input method, were significantly higher than those when writing text messages in English.