Abstract
Young novice drivers frequently tend to overestimate their driving skill as compared with experienced drivers. Two factors, age and experience, seem to contribute to the high probability of being involved in an accident.
Furthermore, they are not so familiar with the actual dynamics of their vehicle. Traditionally, driver training has focused on vehicle control skills and traffic rules knowledge without efforts to improve higher order cognitive skills. These higher order cognitive skills are included in driver training in many countries but rather in a theoretical way, included in textbooks, and is not enough covered in practical training. The reason is that this problem cannot be systematically handled in practical training, as on roads risky situations are scarce and usually avoided. If we take into account that in many European countries, traffic accidents are even the leading cause of death of young peo-ple
(15.000 young people die each year due to road accidents), the size of the problem makes clear that action is needed. Hence, realistic, interactive and off-road tools are required. A novice driver has to learn what type of information is important to pay attention to, and has to evaluate that information in terms of potential danger or hazard. There is clearly the need to develop a practical method to make the driver aware of aspects such as his/her own and other road users limitations, vehicle and infrastructure limitations, lack of experience, the problem of overestimating one's driving ability, the feedback and risk compensation process, etc.
The TRAINER Project meets all the objectives of Key Action "Sustainable Mobility and Intermodality" of "Competitive and Sustainable Growth" EU programme. It specifically supports the objectives of the task "2.2.5/2 Driver Training and Hazard Perception" and this work will significant contribute to the policy "Promoting of Traffic
Safety in the EU". The project focuses on methodologies and tools to assess and improve driver training, while emphasising the needs of novice drivers.
This paper focuses on the development and integration of the TRAINER simulators into a common European driver education and assessment methodology, which concentrates on the improvement of higher-order driving skills like anticipatory driving, risk awareness and economical driving. Goal is to contribute to solving the serious problem of novice drivers and their safe integration into the traffic environment.