Customer: DG VIII CARA

Duration: April 2000 – March 2003

It is well known that young drivers overestimate their driving skill more than older drivers. Furthermore, they are not familiar with the actual dynamics of their vehicle, which define for example the minimum stopping distance in a certain speed. Traditionally, driver training has focused on vehicle control skills and traffic rules without reaching far enough in the efforts to provide risk awareness and other higher order skills. The risk awareness problem is included in driver training in many countries but rather in a theoretical way, included in text books, and is not covered in practical training. The reason is that this problem can not be systematically handled in practical training, as on roads it is very uncertain and even dangerous that a risk situation may occur. Hence, realistic, interactive, off-road tools are required.
TRAINER addresses the above problems with the following innovations:
• A new cost-effective Pan-European driver training methodology, which will pay significant attention to the enhancement of risk awareness of learners drivers and will familiarise them with emerging Advanced Driver Assistance Systems.
• Development of a methodology to assess and support driver’s cognitive skills.
• Development of a new interactive multimedia training tool to support driver training and assessment in strategic and manoeuvring tasks (theoretical driver training improvement).
• Development of a low cost and enhanced reliability stationarystationary driving
• simulator to support driver training and assessment in manoeuvring and control tasks for practical driver training improvement.
• Development of a mean cost and high performance semi-dynamic driving simulator to support specific needs of selected driver cohorts (novice drivers with enhanced knowledge problems, re-training of drivers in high-risk groups).
• Development of concise and reliable driver assessment criteria and methodology and of normative driver behaviour database, to allow an objective assessment and support of the training procedure.
• Verification of the above methodology and assessment of the effect on risk awareness enhancement of learners drivers through tests with 30 novice drivers (and an equal control group) in each of 4 European countries.
• Development of recommendations and best practice guidelines for the adoption of common European driver training and assessment framework.

Role of TREDIT:
– Pilot evaluation of TRAINER pilot tests, including technical, usability, strategic (through SWOT methodology), sensitivity and socio-economic analysis