Advertisement signs with a small amount of text that appears without images impair attention while driving, sometimes even more than signs loaded with text, according to a new study conducted at the University of Haifa.
The study found that in certain situations, in an environment of signs with little text and no graphic images, the response time to a critical incident increases, the response distance increases and the probability of ending the incident in an accident increases almost twice. "One could think that if the advertising sign is minimalistic, includes single words, written in large letters, and does not include any pictures at all, it takes less attention from us to decipher it, and is therefore less dangerous. In our research, we found that in some cases, it is even more dangerous than a busy sign," stated Dr. Hadas Marciano and Dr. Farley Seter, who conducted the study.
In previous studies, Dr. Marciano and Dr. Seter from the Center for Ergonomics and Human Factors at the Institute for Information Processing and Decision Making (MAEMK) at the University of Haifa found that advertising signs distract drivers, impair driving and are even linked to an increase in the number of accidents. In the current study, which was conducted for the research fund of the Insurance Companies Association, they wanted to check whether different types of advertising signs have different effects on driving. After examining 160 advertising signs from around the country, using preliminary research and advanced statistical methods, they divided the signs into three groups: "busy" signs, with lots of text and graphics, "minimalist" signs, with almost no graphics and very little text that appears in large fonts, and signs with little Text that consists mainly of colored graphics. "It could be assumed that an advertisement with single words, written in large and prominently, is less dangerous because it takes less attention from us to understand it, so it was important for us to understand if this is the case", the researcher stated.
In a preliminary study, in which the subjects performed three tasks at the same time but did not experience any actual driving, they found that busy signs impaired the ability to follow an object motorically (analogous to the task of driving a car), graphic signs impaired the ability to recognize color changes (analogous to detecting a color change at a traffic light) and the minimalist signs They did not impair any attention task that was tested.
They wanted to test these findings using a driving simulator. The simulator simulated driving in a natural environment, including traffic lights, pedestrians and advertising signs of various types. Similar to reality, the load on the road and on the curbs will be applied - some of the time the road was busy and some not, some of the time the curbs were busy and some of the time not. As part of the simulation, the drivers faced various scenarios such as sudden braking of the vehicle in front, a pedestrian who bursts into the road, a vehicle that deviates from the track, and more. The drivers' reactions to the various incidents near the sign were compared to their reactions in other scenarios where the incidents occurred in locations without a sign at all.
Surprisingly, the minimalist signs were in certain situations the most dangerous of all. For example, in a situation where the road was busy and the curbs were busy, the response time to a critical incident near such a sign was about a third of a second longer compared to a critical incident without a sign. In this situation, the reaction distance to a critical event that started at the edge, for example a child jumping into the road, was about six meters longer when it occurred in minimalist sign environments compared to an environment with no sign at all. It is not surprising that minimalist signs also affected the risk of an accident: in a situation of a busy road and curb when the incident started on the curb, the risk of an accident increased from 30% without a sign to 52% in the vicinity of such a sign.
Similarly, there were several situations where the busy signs adversely affected driving. For example, when the road was free and so was the curb, and the event started from the curb, the reaction time was one tenth of a second higher in an environment with a busy sign compared to an environment without a sign. In such a case, the risk of an accident increased from 26% without a sign to 43% with a busy sign.
"Signs loaded with text and graphics are dangerous and impair our attention while driving, especially when the traffic on the road is low. However, it turned out that there are different driving situations, especially when the traffic on the road is high, in which a small amount of text appearing without images is even more dangerous. Apparently, the lack of text makes us think that we 'can handle it easily' and therefore pay more attention to these signs than to signs loaded with information, in which we give up in advance the attempt to read while driving in these conditions. Therefore, we pay attention later to an event that requires a quick response, such as a child jumping onto the road, which significantly increases the risk of an accident," the researchers noted.
And what about the advertisements with little text and especially graphics, which were found in this study to not significantly impair driving abilities? According to the researchers, it is still too early to draw a conclusion. "In the basic research, we found that signs of this type impair attention in a task that simulated color identification at a traffic light, that is, it can be assumed that we have difficulty both deciphering the colorful graphic advertisements and paying attention to the changing colors of the traffic lights. In our next study we would like to test this finding in the driving simulation", they concluded
