New Study Finds Siri More Distracting Than Google Now While Driving
Siri and other voice-activated systems can cause potentially unsafe mental distractions lasting several seconds while driving, according to a new research study by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. Siri's score of 3.4 on the five-point scale is considered more distracting than Google Now's 3.0 score, but less distracting than Microsoft Cortana, which received a 3.8 rating.

AAA's mental distraction rankings also included vehicles, ranging from the least distracting Chevy Equinox at 2.4 to the Mazda 6 at 4.6, which is nearly the highest level of cognitive distraction. The study found that mental distractions can persist for as long as 27 seconds after using hands-free or voice-activated systems, as drivers readjust to the task of driving.
“The lasting effects of mental distraction pose a hidden and pervasive danger that would likely come as a surprise to most drivers,” said Peter Kissinger, President and CEO of the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. “The results indicate that motorists could miss stop signs, pedestrians and other vehicles while the mind is readjusting to the task of driving.”
Researchers found that potentially unsafe levels of mental distraction can last for as long as 27 seconds after completing a distracting task in the worst-performing systems studied. At the 25 MPH speed limit in the study, drivers traveled the length of nearly three football fields during this time. When using the least distracting systems, drivers remained impaired for more than 15 seconds after completing a task.
AAA's mental distraction rankings while driving are broken down into five categories:
- Category 1: About the same as listening to the radio or an audio book
- Category 2: About the same as talking on the phone
- Category 3: Equivalent to sending voice-activated texts on an error-free system
- Category 4: About the same as uploading social media
- Category 5: Highly challenging, scientific test designed to overload a driver's attention
The study did not include the latest in-dash systems such as CarPlay or Android Auto.
The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety published Phase I and Phase II of this study over the past few years. In the second phase, the foundation found Siri's high complexity and low intuitiveness resulted in some of the highest levels of mental distraction compared to other in-car tasks such as adjusting the radio or navigating complex menus.
Popular Stories
As previously rumored, the next-generation iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max will feature a unified volume button and a mute button, according to leaked CAD images shared in a video on the Chinese version of TikTok and posted to Twitter by ShrimpApplePro.
Instead of separate buttons for volume up and volume down, the iPhone 15 Pro models are expected to have a single elongated button for...
Apple says iOS 16.4 is coming in the spring, which began this week. In his Sunday newsletter, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said the update should be released "in the next three weeks or so," meaning a public release is likely in late March or early April.
iOS 16.4 remains in beta testing and introduces a handful of new features and changes for the iPhone. Below, we have recapped five new features ...
The iOS 16.4 update that is set to be released to the public in the near future includes voice isolation for cellular calls, according to notes that Apple shared today.
Apple says that Voice Isolation will prioritize your voice and block out the ambient noise around you, making for clearer phone calls where you can better hear the person you're chatting with and vice versa.
Voice...
A first-generation iPhone still sealed inside its box sold for $54,904 at auction, which is more than $54,000 over the original $599 price tag of the device when it was released in 2007.
The original iPhone was put up for sale by RR Auction on behalf of a former Apple employee who purchased it back when it first came out. Back in February, an original, sealed iPhone sold for over $63,000,...
The iOS 16.4 release candidate version that was provided to developers today appears to hint at a new set of AirPods that could be coming in the near future. According to @aaronp613, the beta features references to AirPods that have a model number of A3048 and an AirPods case with a model number of A2968.
There have been no rumors that new AirPods are on the horizon, and it is early for...
Apple today seeded the release candidate versions of upcoming iOS 16.4 and iPadOS 16.4 updates to developers for testing purposes, with the software coming a week after the launch of the fourth betas. The RCs mark the final version of the software that will be provided to the public in the near future. Registered developers are able to download the iOS 16.4 and iPadOS 16.4 updates...
Google today began allowing users to sign up to use Bard, its AI-powered chatbot that rivals Microsoft's Bing chatbot. First announced back in February, Bard is an experimental conversational AI service for Google Search.
Those interested in Bard can join Google's waitlist to get access, and some users have reported getting invitation emails just hours after signing up. There are a long list ...
Samsung today kicked off a special "Discover Samsung" event, which will be a week-long savings event focusing on Samsung monitors, smartphones, TVs, appliances, and more. While some deals will stick around the entire week (through March 26), others will refresh every day.
Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with Samsung. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small...
Top Rated Comments
Some additional thoughts -
1. I'm on the road constantly, driving to and from clients homes and offices. I see allot of people still using their new(looking) phones in recently built cars (BMWs, Mercs, Cadys), that likely at least have bluetooth, up to their head, holding them, steering one-handed (if that).
1.b. I wonder if the people being tested on these systems had ever used any of them, which could skew the results? Based on the number of people I see driving and talking on the phone w/o even using a hands-free, I doubt that most/all had ever used any voice systems in a car before. Unfamiliarity with a system would add to the distraction levels, I'm sure.
2. What additional distractions are introduced by all the testing equipment?
* Cameras mounted inside an instrumented car to track eye and head movement of drivers.
* A Detection-Response-Task device known as the “DRT” was used to record driver reaction time in response to triggers of red and green lights added to their field of vision.
* A special electroencephalographic (EEG)-configured skull cap was used to chart participants’ brain activity so that researchers could determine mental workload.
Yes, the addition of all that crap does't skew the results *at all* ;-) That couldn't be distracting while driving.. nope. Sigh.
3. Are they testing these systems, like Siri, in a way that most people would actually use them, making and answering calls, perhaps setting up reminders, or are they having people do things they may not even do when they're not driving, like composing a post to FaceBook, as we've seen in past tests?
I'm all for promoting safety behind the wheel. I'm also all for anything that could help improve systems like Siri. Tests like these have the potential to help, but, I question the methods being used, and the usefulness of the results these methods produce.
Siri: "..."
Me: (louder) "Play songs from Abba!"
Siri: "... (15 second silence) I'm sorry but [bla bla bla can't hear what she said]"
Me: "Just play random songs"
Siri: "Calling Mom"
Me: (Takes eyes of road, grabs phone, cancels phone call)
Sadly Google Now has been a much superior product, but is limited on what it can access on the iPhone. I don't understand how Siri has failed to lag behind for this long. We see silly articles about trivial party tricks like 'Back to the Future Day' Siri jokes....but the core of the product is still very poor
Well except for the predictable Apple defender that inevitably comes on and says Siri always works for them and I must just mumble or have an accent.