Does the use of a head mounted display increase the success of risk awareness and perception training (RAPT) for drivers?

The PC-based driver training programme, Risk Awareness and Perception Training (RAPT) has been successful in improving young drivers' hazard anticipation and mitigation responses in both simulator and on-road studies. The current research aimed to evaluate the success of an adaptation of this training for the UK context, along with investigating the impact of the presentation modality on RAPT effectiveness. Traditionally RAPT has been delivered on a PC monitor, which does not allow the same range of head and eye movements that drivers use when on the road. Thus, it was anticipated that the 360° field-of-view provided by Head Mounted Display (HMD) technology would provide a more ecologically valid experience, facilitating deeper processing and encoding of driving relevant scanning patterns, and an increased capacity to identify potentially hazardous areas of a driving scenario. Using a between-subjects design, three different training modalities were compared - a PC-based version using still images (PC-Stills), a HMD version using still images (HMD-Stills), and a HMD version using videos (HMD-video). All three training groups’ performance on the UK Hazard Perception test was compared to that of a control group, who received no training. Results indicated that the adaptation of the training materials for the UK context was successful, with all three training programmes leading to performance improvements in the RAPT tests. Although participants in the HMD-video condition required more attempts to pass the training, this group showed the greatest improvement in hazard perception scores from the pre- to the post-training tests. Results also showed scenario-based differences between the modalities, suggesting that the success of different versions of RAPT may be linked to the type of risky scenario being targeted.