Driving Simulator Validation for Drivers' Speed Behavior

In order to investigate whether the driving simulator can be used as a valid tool to assess traffic safety at drivers' speed behavior, the paper reports on a validation study of the interactive fixed-base driving simulator of Wuhan University of Technology (WHUT). In this study, speed in field was recorded at thirteen measurement sites with different alignment configurations on a national road at first. Then, the real world was reproduced in the driving simulator and twenty-five drivers were recruited to drive on the driving simulator. The results of the comparative and statistical analysis showed that the speeds drivers chosen on the simulator were little higher than that on the real road, but they were still from the same Gauss distribution. This result would be taken as evidence for relative validity and the validated driving simulator could be a suitable alternative to the field studies for speed research.