Simulating On-the-Road Behavior Using a Driving Simulator

In this paper, we summarize the initial results with regard to the question to what extent driving simulators can be used to serve as cheap and easy realizable environments for simulating on-the-road behavior. The aim of these first studies was to determine whether or not it is possible to replace real driving studies with experiments and furthermore, to identify parameters and/or restrictions for a second experimental series with improved settings. We have conducted two studies comparing the driver's reaction time in real and simulated environments with the final goal to provide a universal metric describing the differences in reaction time. The events were, in the case of simulation, triggered trace-driven or, in the real driving experiment, manually activated by the experimenter and notifications were forwarded to the driver using either a visual, auditory, or haptic sensory channel. The comparison of the two studies showed that (i) both settings provide similar results for the order of average response using the three feedback modalities and (ii) the experiment using a simulator performed, for the measure of reaction time, better in the range of 13% compared to the real driving study (the reason for this result is most likely caused by the fact that driving in a real world environment is much more challenging than in a driving simulator).