By Mike Griffin, Simulation Training Manager, Driving Dynamics
As a simulation training designer and instructor, I have had the privilege of watching many students in simulator driver safety training navigate the scenarios I’ve developed—ones designed to emulate real-world challenges occurring every day on the road. Having designed hundreds driving scenarios, I wanted a fresh perspective and to examine out how well the training elements performed. One summer I set up a simulator in my home, calling on a highly specialized focus group—my 15-year-old son Jake and my wife Marlene, to test scenarios involving hazard perception, decision making, and driving on ice and snow.
At first their virtual drives resulted in many crashes, but each time they got back into the simulator their performance improved—fewer crash incidents, more observant, expecting the unexpected making them more aware of their surroundings. It was gratifying for me to see their crash avoidance proficiencies sky rocket.
Applying Knowledge in the Real World
About a year later my son and I were headed into downtown Des Moines, Iowa with me in the passenger seat and Jake behind the wheel. As we were making our way into the city—with streets much like those in the scenarios I had him drive—I noticed he reduced his speed to about 10 miles per hour lower than the posted speed limit. When I asked why he did this, Jake explained he was looking ahead for the possibility of car doors opening onto the street or pedestrians walking into the road between parked cars. As a both father and instructor, I could not have been prouder that Jake was applying the knowledge he gained from his time in the simulator and expecting the unexpected.
Now, my wife Marlene also had the opportunity to put her simulator training to the test, unfortunately the circumstances were much more serious than what Jake had experienced. She was driving westbound on Highway 235 in Des Moines when traffic in front of her came to an abrupt stop. This was nothing out of the ordinary given that it was rush hour, but what did get Marlene’s attention was the vehicle coming up behind her at a high rate of speed without any signs of slowing. Realizing that an impact was imminent, she checked the lane to her left, saw that it was clear and turned her steering wheel in that direction while simultaneously releasing the brake pedal, all in an effort to minimize the force of being struck at more than 50 miles per hour by the reckless driver fast approaching from behind.
Although the impact was still severe, Marlene’s quick decisions allowed some of the collision force to be deflected, preventing her vehicle from being thrust into the back of the car in front and making it possible for her to walk away with only minor bruises. So why did Marlene think to take such actions in response to this situation? The answer is: she practiced this exact scenario during her driving simulations months earlier. And I was grateful I’d called on my son and wife to help me test the driving safety scenarios that one summer.
So, as with Jake and Marlene’s safety training, fleet operators have an excellent opportunity to enhance their drivers’ skills and address risky habits in a safe but realistic environment using simulation training based on an advanced instructional design process often referred to as Discovery Learning.
A Discovery Learning Process
Properly designed simulator-based safety courses place drivers in a variety of realistic, relatable, hazardous traffic situations. The Discovery Learning process takes hold as trainees are challenged to make real-time decisions and proficiently execute corrective actions. They become keenly aware of the consequences of their decisions and subsequent actions. Any missteps reveal painful outcomes and have significant impact—personalizing results and motivating students to seek effective, safe resolutions. The goal of the Discovery Learning process is to help drivers gain confidence and skills in identifying potential hazards sooner, and to competently initiate corrective actions to remedy these situations based on well-practiced decision making capabilities.
Simulator-based training is most effective when used as a learning component within specialized courses conducted by qualified safety instructors. A good practice is to make sure that drivers are first well rooted and competent in advanced vehicle control. Attendance in a qualified, advanced performance behind-the-wheel safety training course will accomplish this for your fleet drivers. This training combination offered at appropriate intervals should be specified in a company’s driver safety training policy.
To better understand the benefits of instructor-led simulation safety training, the unique aspects this immersive form of learning have been outlined here:
Practice the Un-Practicable
A clear advantage of simulator training is the opportunity to experience and control outcomes in high-risk driving conditions. Certainly too hazardous to practice in real life, these exercises, professionally structured, can provide measurable results that help reduce death, injury and liability issues in a safe, educational format. The driving scenarios allow for the implications of positive and negative decisions to become real and quite meaningful to the student. To make a compromised decision in a simulator puts into perspective the outcome of right or wrong choices.
Evaluate and Design
Today’s advanced simulators are extremely powerful and programmable to control weather, traffic, pedestrians, wildlife, and other vehicles, as needed, to create realistic driving conditions and deliver impactful training moments.
They offer the ability to examine a company’s crash frequency and identify root causes, that, in turn, allow simulation instructors to create driving scenarios that emulate just those specific circumstances with which drivers and fleet operators as a whole struggle. For example, for fleets whose drivers experience a lot of parking lot or backing incidents, instructors can create driving scenarios that immerse students in exactly these situations. In this environment, students are free to make mistakes without the risks, adjust based on outcomes, practice more appropriate solutions, and competently be prepared to avoid the same situation in real life.
Here is one example of the path of a simulation scenario: If a trainee drives down a virtual suburban street at the posted speed limit, then traffic entering from side streets and driveways will yield. However, if he or she exceeds the posted speed, then virtual traffic will pull out in front of the trainee’s vehicle, causing a hazard.
Controlled, Reliable, Repeatable Training
Instructor-led, driving simulation safety training occurs in a controlled environment offering year-round accessibility. Also, each training scenario is programmed to accomplish the particular needs of the fleet operator ensuring that every student has the same learning experience. Environment and curriculum consistency together create reliable and repeatable training, which provides results that are easy to track and document.
Learning from Experience—The Easy Way
All driving activities performed by a student during a scenario are recorded. An entire incident can be replayed from multiple angles for analysis and discussion. This is particularly important when a student makes a sub-standard or risky decision resulting in a catastrophic outcome. During replay, the instructor can review the sequence of events while querying the student about what motivated him or her to make a particular decision. The student is further challenged to offer alternative courses of action which can be tested during the next drive. Working through this with a professional coaching instructor, students analyze the contributing factors and they themselves make the corrective observations rather than being shown the right choice. This Discovery Learning instructional process is valuable because it becomes learning deeply embedded in the driver’s brain through neural mapping that triggers proper responses when faced with similar real-life situations.
Observing Is Learning
Another component of the Discovery Learning process comes with the ability to replay and review simulation scenarios. Students, along with their instructors, can observe and analyze how other participants performed when facing the same potential driving hazards. The observing students benefit by considering how their peers operated in various driving situations and the results they experienced. This increases learning saturation and also allows students to see that there may be more than one way to positively resolve a hazardous driving situation.
Getting Real in Virtual Reality
An interesting effect of training is how quickly students’ brains adjust to take on the simulations as reality. As drivers immerse themselves in well-designed virtual driving environments, they quickly lose awareness that they are driving in simulated traffic conditions and their normal operational decisions and driving habits, good or bad, begin to surface and they behave much as they would in their own vehicles. If a student drives aggressively in the simulator, his or her actions are quite likely the same in real life. Discovering these types of behaviors during a training session provides the perfect opportunity to witness and track hazardous driving behaviors related to steering control, scanning, risk taking, or distractions.
Final Thoughts
Remember the Miracle on the Hudson? When Captain “Sully” Sullenberger, pilot for US Airways flight 1549 landed his plane in the Hudson River saving the lives of everyone onboard? So why did he think to take such actions in response to this situation? The answer is: Just like Marlene, he practiced and used the skills acquired through hours of simulation training to be able to quickly make smart, safe decisions in a crises situation.
The good news is the same type of advanced training that made it possible for Marlene and Sully to mitigate much larger tragedies is accessible to fleet operators. The Discovery Learning process used in conjunction with simulator-based training creates the opportunity for drivers to achieve higher safety performance levels through the collaborative learning exchanges between student and the coaching instructor. Students, practicing the un-practicable, progress in this instructional framework from nominal operational and decision making competencies to superior, competent hard-wired capabilities. Consider including instructor-led simulation training in your fleet safety program. Improving drivers’ situational and spatial awareness, coupled with positive decision making, will produce competent drivers delivering tangible, measurable safety results.
Safety & Risk is presented by Driving Dynamics an accomplished provider of impactful driver safety training and risk management services. Continually building and delivering programs based on sound research, proven learning methodologies and expert instruction, we are dedicated to improving drivers’ abilities to stay safe by leveraging risk management tools, principle-based learning and applied techniques. The One-Second Advantage™ safety training principle developed by Driving Dynamics is rooted in research that shows 90 percent of all traffic crashes can be avoided when the driver has just one more second to react and knows what to do with that additional second. Driving Dynamics encourages all drivers to Steer Toward Safety™
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