Presented at First international conference on driver distraction and inattention (DDI 2009), Gothenburg, Sweden, September 28-29, 2009

A major limitation in existing approaches to attention selection in driving research is a lack of focus on driving as an active process, strongly driven by task goals and context. This paper outlines an attention selection model which is action-oriented and intended to capture real world driving situations. Based on this model, three main types of task interference in driving are proposed. Implications of the action-oriented view for the design of driver behaviour studies and automotive human machine interfaces are discussed.