Study Shows Ford SYNC™ Reduces Driving Distractions, Helps Drivers Keep Eyes on Road
A new Ford study shows that the SYNC hands-free connectivity system, which recently earned Popular Mechanics’ Editor’s Choice Award for best new products, significantly reduces the level of distraction when drivers select a phone number or choose a song on their MP3 player compared with the same operations with hand-held cell phones and music players.
For example, the research conducted by Ford Motor Company shows study participants spent an average of 25 seconds with their eyes-off-the-road to select a song with a handheld MP3 player compared with 2 seconds for those choosing a song using SYNC.
SYNC allows drivers to connect almost any mobile phone or digital media player with their vehicle (via Bluetooth or USB connection). The driver is able to operate them by using voice commands and a steering wheel-mounted control.
Voice interface helps minimize handheld device-related distractions
The study’s 25 participants who are regular SYNC users performed seven typical tasks using SYNC’s voice interface and their personal handheld phones and music players. For each basic task, Ford researchers measured total eyes-off-the-road time, deviation of lane position, speed variability, and object detection response time to identify differences in attentiveness and driving performance.
Other findings included reading a text message on a handheld phone typically took the driver’s eyes off the road for 11 seconds compared to about 2 seconds when listening to the text message with SYNC's text-to-speech output. Drivers also meandered over lane lines in more than 30 percent of trials using handheld phones and music players for song, artist, and phone book contact selection, as compared to zero percent when performing those same tasks with SYNC. Study participants also spent an average of 25 seconds with their eyes-off-the-road to select a song with a handheld MP3 player compared with 2 seconds for those choosing a song using SYNC.
Ford’s study results are consistent with prior research, such as Virginia Tech and the U.S. Department of Transportation’s recent driving study, which followed 109 drivers for one year, including 42,300 hours of driving over two million miles. That study concluded that manually dialing a handheld device – a task that requires looks away from the road – while driving was almost 2.8 times riskier than normal driving. However, the on-the-road study showed that talking/listening on a phone while driving was no riskier than normal driving.
The success of SYNC continues to grow. By summer 2009, Ford’s entire North American lineup will offer this technology with more than 1 million SYNC-equipped vehicles on the road by the third quarter of 2009.
Tags: , Ford, Ford Motor Company, safety, SYNC
