Icons for Actions in a Driving Simulator

• Published in: Driver Behaviour and Training Vol. IV; pp. 317 - 325
• Main Author: Barbour, Robert H
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Routledge 2010
• Edition: 1
• ISBN: 1409400840; 9781409400844
• DOI: 10.4324/9781003577973-31

The motor vehicle provides one of a number of globally accepted means of quickly moving people and products from place to place with very few constraints. There is a continued expansion of traffic across international borders with substantially different driving practices and conventions. With wide acceptance comes greater use. to the extent that driver behaviour is a focus of interest where use is such that congestion is common in particular localities. The major issue in driver training is the development of vehicle control skills required to keep to the carriageway and avoid damage to the vehicle from other objects (either stationary or moving). Almost without exception this fundamental position remains implicit in driver training in many countries. There are, of course, variations from country- to country, reflected in a growing interest in the psychology of driving, but very little research into driving behaviour in the social context of other drivers exists. The study of the social aspects of everyday driver interactions is very much in the early stages. There has been some study of simulated driving environments in high-cost commercial and research-based driving simulators. This research is specific to particular vehicles and tracks. Data and findings are not accessible to the research community and international research in the area is not direcdy replicable. The major constraints on augmented reality driving simulation studies are the issues of how valid and reliable the data generated in the simulations are in relation to realworld data (Blana. 1996). Validity is difficult to establish where real and virtual worlds are compared because the essence of a simulation is that it is not the real world but generates approximately the same experiences for participants. There is little doubt that studies using the same environment in both software and hardware should facilitate reliable and comparable studies. However, developments in lowcost consumer-level computers, associated graphics processors, force feedback control devices and serious games software opens up new possibilities for comparable studies of group behaviour, as is described below.