Portable Vehicle Simulator for Training Novice Drivers

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Younger novice male drivers (sixteen year olds with at most six months of driving experience) are some nine times more likely to be involved in a fatal crash (per 100 million miles of vehicle travel) than drivers in the safest cohorts, those between the ages of 45 and 60. Younger novice female drivers (again, 16 year olds) are almost four times more likely to be involved in a fatal crash than drivers in the safest cohorts. The enactment of tougher laws concerning drinkin g and driving, the introduction of Graduated Licensing programs and better record-keeping by Motor Vehicle agencies have contributed to decreases in the death and injury rate that are reflected in decreases in novice driver risk-taking behaviors. But decre ases in the other key aspect of the young novice driver crash problem, the lack of cognitive and perceptual skills and abilities that are important for safe driving, has not kept pace with other developments, and this continues to block overall improvement s in safety. Experts have estimated that anywhere between 75% and 80% of the crashes among novice drivers are due to the lack of such cognitive skills and abilities38. Skilled operator training using simulators has become increasingly accepted in many industries during the past twenty years. In applications as diverse as commercial aviation and nuclear power plant control, simulators have become so well accepted that individuals can be fully trained and licensed in simulators without ever having operat ed the actual equipment in the field. However, neither affordable simulators nor proven novice driver risk awareness training programs have been available until very recently. We have developed a unique driving simulator that is particularly well su ited to training novice drivers. The Drive Square simulator permits the use of the actual vehicle that is used by the novice driver, and it is completely portable. These two patent-pending advances permit us to overcome major constraints that adversely imp act the ability to conduct training for novice drivers - the cost to driver education programs that is required in order to train a novice driver using a simulator and the question of positive transfer of training to the open road. Additionally, we have de veloped and evaluated a unique, PC-based novice driver risk-awareness training program that has more than tripled novice drivers' awareness of risks in a broad range of different scenarios that can and do lead to crashes. This project will: refine and test the Drive Square simulator's software and hardware; extend the PC-based novice driver training program to the high-fidelity simulator at the University of Massachusetts so that training actually occurs on the simulator (not just the PC), thereby pote ntially magnifying the effectiveness of the training still further; evaluate the effectiveness of the simulator training program on the high-fidelity simulator; and then demonstrate that the Drive Square simulator can be used to achieve training benefits e quivalent to what is achieved on the high-fidelity simulator.