The Influences of Cigarette Smoking on Psychomotor Performance of Driving: Perceptual Speed, 2-Hand Coordination

Epidemiological researches indicated smokers are overrepresented in road traffic crashes. This study aimed to measure the influence of cigarette smoking on reaction time and selective attention required for safe driving (psychomotor performance of driving).
This semi-experimental study was carried out in laboratory of Sina Trauma Research Center of Tehran University of Medical Sciences in 2017. Twenty-twenty male university students aged 20-40 years from Tehran universities who had smoked occasionally participated voluntarily. Data collection tools consisted of two tests of the traffic psychological pack of Vienna Test System (VTS) and two questionnaires including nicotine dependency (Fagerstrom), individual characteristics and their views on cigarette smoking. Mixed model analysis was used to survey the change in the test scores due to cigarette smoking.
The mean ± standard deviation of age and nicotine dependency score (Fagerstrom) was 25.6 ± 3 years and 1.1 ± 1.4 respectively. Based on the results, 45.5% of participants believed that driving performance will be worse and little worse with cigarette smoking. But in this study, eye- hand and Hand-hand coordination and perceptual speed from psychomotor skills of driving did not show any significant association with the one cigarette smoking. (P≤0.05).
The results showed that the use of one cigarette in people who smoke occasionally does not change the score of eye-hand and Hand-hand coordination and perceptual speed significantly that is required for driving safety. A study on permanent smokers with a variety of addiction scores of nicotine is recommended.