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Smartphones are part of people's everyday lives. They use them all the time, wherever they are, even in the car. More and more drivers are text messaging or writing emails while driving, yet it is known that reading and writing text messages can have a negative impact on drivers’ performance and increase the risk of accidents (e.g. greater deviation from the lane and slower reactions to sudden occurrences).

In previous research, participants have largely not been free to choose the situations in which they engage in text messaging while driving. Instead, they have been encouraged to write a text message at specific points on a route (generally in a driving simulator), regardless of whether they would normally have done this in real traffic.

At the same time, research studies also show that drivers invariably make an assessment of the traffic situation before deciding to read or write text messages, and they proceed according to the requirements of the driving situation. This suggests that previous findings on the consequences of reading and writing text messages while driving do not adequately reflect what actually happens on the roads. However, the fact that drivers adjust their text messaging behavior depending on the traffic situation does not rule out the possibility of negative consequences of drivers being distracted. It is not clear whether their subjective assessment of the driving situation is actually correct and meets the requirements of the driving situation. It is also not clear to what extent new technical developments such as speech recognition have an impact on driving performance and drivers’ reactions. There are at least indications that speech recognition can have a positive impact on driving performance and reactions compared to manual input.