The cause of traffic incidents has been an area of interest for some time, attempting to combat traffic incident-related deaths. One of the leading causes identified is driver distraction. In recent years, there have been technological advancements with in-vehicle infotainment systems, which could increase driver distraction. This study aims to design and evaluate a safe virtual reality environment to measure the level of distraction caused by modern-day in-vehicle infotainment systems using driver reaction times as a metric. The research will identify the benefits of virtual reality, why it should be used, and an effective method of testing reaction times. An in-vehicle infotainment system was designed and developed for the study. The system was then tested on ten volunteers, where their reaction times were measured for different distractions. The results suggest that the virtual reality environment developed and used in this study was moderately effective at creating a sense of presence and believability. However, some improvements could be made to better reflect the real world. Results are also consistent with other studies in the field, identifying the in-vehicle infotainment system as a distraction. The average reaction time when not distracted was 0.746 seconds, while the average when distracted by the in-vehicle infotainment system increased to 1.453 seconds. This demonstrates that virtual reality head-mounted displays can be used as an effective and beneficial tool in the future for measuring driver reaction times to identify the distraction caused by in-vehicle infotainment systems.
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