VISUAL CUES : A WAY TO ENHANCE ACCURATE JUDGEMENTS OF TRAVEL SPEED IN DRIVER SIMULATORS

Abstract: Drivers in simulators tend to drive faster than in a real car. The study aimed to examine if visual cues impact driver velocity in a simulator. This is important because of the tendency for users of to drive faster in simulators than in authentic driving situations. This is supposed to be caused by the lack of sufficient cues in the simulated environment to convey motion. The hypothesis advocates that the usage of visual cues would make simulated motion cues more realistic to assist the driver to make accurate judgements of their driving speed. Accurate judgements would in turn result in less speeding in the driver simulator. The experiment was conducted in a driver simulator in a collaboration with SAFE trafikskola. The experiment compared two conditions where visual cues were more and less present. The data was complimented with a survey to gather additional information. The result from the t-test showed a significant effect on the measured velocity, whereas the two-way ANOVA yielded no such impact. The repeated measures ANOVA contributed with significant results on the difference between the points of measure and gave no significant main effect between conditions. Together with the complimentary survey the conclusion was made that the usage of visual cues in a driver simulator can affect the velocity of the driver. The knowledge regarding visual cues in a simulated environments could be used to improve driver simulators. Future research has the possibility to investigate motion cues from other modalities than vision to increase realism in driver simulators.