Driving Simulators as Research Tools in Traffic Psychology

Publisher Summary Driving simulators are now a major tool, arguably the major tool, for research on driver performance and behavior. Using two major journals—Transportation Research Part F and Human Factors—as the benchmark, it can be seen that studies based on simulator research constitute a major proportion of the published papers in the driving domain. Simulators provide the opportunity to investigate driving under controlled conditions in a manner that is unparalleled by the alternatives. Real-world studies lack the equivalent control element, whereas test tracks offer a very depleted and inflexible driving environment. Simulator capability, particularly in terms of the graphics performance of PC-based systems, has grown very fast in recent years, and the advent of small-scale and relatively low-cost motion systems means that it may soon become a standard for a midrange simulator to be equipped with six degrees of freedom of motion. The number of research simulators worldwide continues to increase, and simulator studies constitute an increasing proportion of the research literature on driving performance and behavior. Simulators may not be total replicates of the real world, and indeed they cannot be. But they offer the researcher of driver behavior an advantage that real-world studies cannot match: the ability to control experimental conditions and create prescripted scenarios.