Evaluation of Driving Performance at Three Levels of Driving Experience By Means of the Auto Trainer

Driver education is one of the most generally accepted methods being advocated\u27 for reducing the annual motor vehicle fatality toll. Lack of teachers and facilities limit the number of students that can be taught by the schools. One approach for teaching driving skills is by the use of simulated driving apparatus used in the classroom or laboratory. An example of these devices is the Auto Trainer developed by the American Automobile Association. A study by Lauer, Allgaier, Siebrecht and Suhr (1) shows that the Auto Trainer yields sufficiently reliable scores to warrant its use as an educational instrument in a classroom situation, but that the total time score varied with the experience of the different experimental groups. This finding was the basis for the main hypothesis of the current study. Positively stated, it is that the steering, error, movement, response time and total time scores, as subscores on the Auto Trainer, are functions of driving experience and/or aptitude in driving. More specifically, total time scores are a function of training behind-the-wheel