How do we drive with a storm of information in the car?

All of a sudden, a truck pulls out from the shoulder and the forward collision-warning system starts beeping. You brake, then an electronic voice announces: "Incoming Internet news."

While trying to scan headlines on a dash-mounted computer screen, the cell phone rings. Then more Internet news arrives.

Another voice poses a question: "If your car gets 12 miles to the gallon, how many gallons will you need to travel 96 miles?" Still pondering the math, you hear the onboard navigation system's electronic voice command, "Turn left ahead." An arrow appears on the computer screen.

You miss the turn.

So do one out of six drivers who take the test. Some don't answer the phone. Others ignore the Internet or can't remember what they read. Under the circumstances, even the third-grade math problem becomes a brain teaser.

Those are the early results from the federal government's first attempt to measure how drivers deal with a potential information overload from an array of high-tech features being installed in automobiles such as onboard navigation systems and cell phones.

The study -- expected to be formally released late this summer -- is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Transportation's Intelligent Vehicle Initiative, which promotes in-vehicle devices that can warn drivers of dangerous situations, recommend actions or even assume partial control to avoid accidents.

"All the stuff in there is based on actual systems," ORNL senior scientist Dr. Philip Spelt said of the gadgets he installed in a simulator to test the reactions of 36 drivers.

Although numbers are still being crunched, Spelt said the overall outcome already is obvious: "People who got bombarded with three or four devices all at once had more trouble dealing with the whole situation than people where we spread them out."

Studies until now have focused only on the effect of the gadgets individually, said Dr. Tom Granda, who oversees Spelt's study from DOT's Office of Safety Research and Development in Washington.

"What we asked Phil Spelt to do ... was to look at what is the distraction value of a combination of these things. What are the human performance issues involving multiple systems in a vehicle?"

Spelt recognizes that some might question how often all of these systems would go off in such rapid succession.

"And the answer is: All it takes is once and if somebody is dead, they don't have to worry about it anymore," he said.

Automakers are starting their own investigations.

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