Driving Simulator Validation Studies: A Literature Review.

This literature review is part of the "Driver performance in the EPSRC driving simulator: a validation study" project funded by EPSRC. It focuses mainly on driving simulator validation studies with regard to driver behaviour. Various approaches, methodologies and criteria have been proposed until today regarding the behavioral and physical validation of a driving simulator. At the same time, a number of behavioural validation studies have been conducted, with or without taking into account the proposed validation approaches. The author considered necessary this literature review because according to her knowledge there was no other published review which examined thoroughly the link between theory (proposed validation approaches and methodologies) and practice (validation studies cc driving simulators). Most of the recent behaviour validation studies have been focused on the absolute and relative validity of the simulator without taking into consideration the issue of the face validity.

The format of this paper will be as follows. A small introduction to driving simulators and their usefulness will be presented first followed by the necessity of validating them. The existing validation approaches, methodologies and criteria will be analysed and earlier and recent behaviour validation studies will be reviewed and compared in detail. These studies will be classified according to the driver behaviour levels and driving performance (as they will be defined) and then will be assessed according to the validation criteria. Emphasis will be given to the interpretation of the findings from these comparisons, and in particular to their applicability in real road traffic situations.