What, Who, and When? The Perceptions That Young Drivers and Parents Have of Driving Simulators for Use in Driver Education

Driver education providers may utilise technologies such as driving simulators to augment their existing courses. Understanding the perceptions that young drivers and parents have of simulators may help to make simulator-based driver education more accepted and more likely to be effective. Young drivers and parents completed an online questionnaire that included a “simulator invention” visualisation task. Items based on the Goals for Driver Education framework investigated perceptions of the most appropriate skill type, while others examined the most suitable target group for simulator training, and timing in relation to completing a formal driver education course for simulator training to occur. Both groups perceived that simulators were most appropriate for training a combination of physical, traffic, psychological, and social driving skills with learner drivers during attendance at a novice driver education program. Young drivers and parents had similar perceptions regarding the amount that each skill type should be trained using a simulator. Understanding the perceptions of young drivers and parents, and especially those who are somewhat naïve to the use of driving simulators, may aid in the introduction and administration of simulator training and may increase the effectiveness of driver education as a crash countermeasure.

Situation Awareness Fast-Tracking, Including Identifying Escape Routes (SAFER): Evaluation of the Impact of SAFER on Learner Driver Situation Awareness Skills

Despite a plethora of education, engineering, and enforcement-related intervention, the pernicious problem that is young driver road safety remains of global interest. Compared with more experienced drivers, young novice drivers have been found to have deficits in situation awareness skills (SAS), which is an essential repertoire of knowledge and abilities in perceiving, comprehending, and appropriately responding to a breadth of driving risks (projection). Current practice requirements in Queensland, Australia, do not incorporate SAS-specific training for parents, the most common supervisor of novice drivers. This study evaluates the impact of SAFER, a SAS-acquisition acceleration “game” in which parents foster SAS in their child during the period before licensure, on novice driver SAS at learner licensure. Sixty parent–pre-learner dyads were recruited from the Sunshine Coast and randomly allocated to intervention ( n = 30) and control ( n = 29). Using a SAS-based coding taxonomy, SAS was measured via simulator-based verbal commentary protocol at learner licensure as part of a larger longitudinal project. Intervention learners exhibited significantly greater SAS (perception/comprehension/projection of breadth of driving risks), than control learners. Intervention learners exhibited significantly less perception, and considerably greater perception/comprehension/projection SAS than intervention parents. Currently, in Queensland’s licensing program there is limited support for parents/other supervisors of learner drivers, and no SAS-focused intervention is available. SAFER is an innovative SAS-acquisition acceleration intervention that has been shown to build SAS even before the young novice is licensed to drive. A larger state-wide pilot is in development to explore the merit of incorporating SAFER within Queensland’s graduated driver licensing program.