Driving simulator sickness: Impact on driving performance, influence of blood alcohol concentration, and effect of repeated simulator exposures.

Simulator sickness is a major obstacle to the use of driving simulators for research, training and driver assessment purposes. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the possible influence of simulator sickness on driving performance measures such as standard deviation of lateral position (SDLP), and the effect of alcohol or repeated simulator exposure on the degree of simulator sickness. Twenty healthy male volunteers underwent three simulated driving trials of 1h's duration with a curvy rural road scenario, and rated their degree of simulator sickness after each trial.

Evaluation of measures of impairment in real and simulated driving: Results from a randomized, placebo-controlled study.

Objective: Standard deviation of lateral position (SDLP) is often the primary outcome in experimental studies on impaired driving. However, other measures may be easier and more practical to obtain and reflect a broader range of driving-related behaviors. We wanted to assess the validity and sensitivity of a range of measures in a driving simulator as well as during real driving and compare these to SDLP.

Comparison of driving simulator performance with real driving after alcohol intake: a randomised, single blind, placebo-controlled, cross-over trial.

The purpose of this study was to establish and validate a driving simulator method for assessing drug effects on driving. To achieve this, we used ethanol as a positive control, and examined whether ethanol affects driving performance in the simulator, and whether these effects are consistent with performance during real driving on a test track, also under the influence of ethanol. Twenty healthy male volunteers underwent a total of six driving trials of 1h duration; three in an instrumented vehicle on a closed-circuit test track that closely resembled rural Norwegian road conditions, and three in the simulator with a driving scenario modelled after the test track.