Skip to main content

Journal article

Multitasking while driving: a time use study of commuting knowledge workers to assess current and future uses


Commuting has enormous impact on individuals, families, organizations, and society. Advances in vehicle automation may help workers employ the time spent commuting in productive work-tasks or wellbeing activities. To achieve this goal, however, we need to develop a deeper understanding of which work and personal activities are of value for commuting workers. In this paper we present results from an online time-use study of 400 knowledge workers who commute-by-driving. The data allow us to study multitasking-while-driving behavior of commuting knowledge workers, identify which non-driving tasks knowledge workers currently engage in while driving, and the non-driving tasks individuals would like to engage in when using a safe highly automated vehicle in the future. We discuss the implications of our findings for the design of technology that supports work and wellbeing activities in automated cars. © 2022


Andrew L. Kun, Raffaella Sadun, Orit Shaer and Thomaz Teodorovicz

1 June 2022


International Journal of Human Computer Studies 1622022


DOI: 10.1016/j.ijhcs.2022.102789

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1071581922000180

This work is published under POID and the CEP's Growth programme.