[Dr.Procastinate]

Hey Everybody.

I wanted to start this new thread just to know about everyone's opinion on something that's been bugging me for quite some time --> How driving in the virtual space affects the road manners of the drivers in real life. In my eyes, this is going to important as the current bunch of people (including me) who are getting their licenses now are from a time where access to a computer/console was easy in their childhood and have had the opportunity to play a multitude of driving/racing games and might have spent a lot of time doing it.

I was an avid PC gamer for a long while and used to sit on the PC for 6-8 hours everyday during Vacations to the ire of my parents. As far as I remember, I started gaming on the PC when I just turned 4 years old on my parents' old Pentium single core PC from '98-'99, with a rather obscure game called "Boss Rally" and the evergreen Midtown Madness, then progressed to games like Need for Speed, Midnight Club, Grand Theft Auto (mostly). As I grew older, I moved on to games like Forza, Dirt for racing and games like Spintires and Beam NG Drive just for the driving dynamics and for offering wider variety but still held on to the GTA and NFS series coz, well, they are GTA and NFS .

Well, Now to topic proper, speaking for myself, it would not be an exaggeration to say that I learnt the basics of vehicle dynamics from video games and the dynamics of road traffic.

I have tried to summarize the positive and negative effects of video games on my real-life driving style, as perceived by me :-

Pros :

Better understanding of vehicle and the road :

I would say this is one of the major points in favour. I find people with extensive 'virtual' driving experience taking lesser time to get comfortable on the road. I felt myself able to drive the car passably on the first day of my driving lessons and learnt from a few gaming buddies that they had a similar experience. I don't know if this is due to familiarity or confidence, but it definitely has made a difference!


Better reflexes :

Well, people with gaming experience do better in unexpected situations against non-gamers with similar real-life road experience, as far as I have observed. I believe this is from the familiarity of handling similar situations in the virtual space.


Cons :

Throttle control :

This is a purely personal one. I have only played on PC, where there is no option to maintain your throttle at a steady pace. You just hold onto the Up arrow or W and accelerate to the hilt. During my initial driving days, this habit took over in real-life too and a couple of days of conscious effort got this out of my system for good.


A certain disregard for rules ! :

It is often complained that videogames promote rash driving. I still remember a pic on one of the threads( I think Weird and wacky mods) I saw a while back, of a WagonR with a caption on the rear windshield that went like The driver learnt driving from GTA Vice City so people should approach him at their own risk . Jokes apart, I don't know if games do make people drive rashly in real life but one thing that's true is that none of these games are targeted to make the player driving like a normal, law-abiding citizen. I still remember a challenge between my dad and me while I was on GTA 5 to drive according to the traffic rules and not hit anything/anybody for as long as possible. After doing it for a while, I felt very different from the way that I usually go about with the game . After this, I turned towards games focused on the nuances of driving rather than outright racing.



Well, I would love to know what everyone thinks about this !



Request to Mods : Please merge this post with an appropriate thread if a similar, related thread exists (And sorry for the trouble).

[GTO]

Thread moved out from the Assembly Line. Thanks for sharing!

Going to our homepage this week

Video games & good YouTube videos most definitely help newbie drivers understand road conditions better. I think they are fantastic familiarisation tools.

Do that. Top it up with a driving school simulator from Maruti and you will start your first drive better prepared.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3y5F_HrQRo

[SmartCat]

- Upgrading video game car with better tyres, suspension, adding turbo etc gave me an itch to keep upgrading my first car -> I changed tyres, alloys, headlights, air filter etc

- After an accident (I was not driving but sitting in passenger seat), I was looking for a "Reset" (R) button which would magically give me a new but same car with all the damages gone.

[Kkumar]

In pilot’s training, a part of the training is carried out in simulators, this is to familiarise the student pilot with the layout of the cockpit and improve his hand-eye-leg coordination. But one really learns to fly when he is doing it in a real plane in a real world.

When it comes to video games such a thing is not there because it has been purely developed for entertainment and not for teaching. It’s true that they may have better reflexes but they will be learning more to do the wrong thing than the right thing. This can be seen by the way the youngsters ride their bikes. So my take is that video games are a bad influence when it comes to real world driving.

[Everlearner]

The line between real and virtual world is blurring. This also means that the line between reality and fiction is blurring. If you have a look at all the AI generated images circulating on social media, you realize that they can be easily mistaken as real ones.

How is this relevant to driving?
The human behavior is shaped by experiences whether real or virtual. If you keep driving a car rashly in simulated world, there is a high chance (not always though) that some of it may impact your behavior in real world because of how the brain is configured/conditioned.

[roy_libran]

A couple of points from me:

1. Playing a modern, realistic Driving game (e.g. Forza) goes a very long way in developing good understanding and approximation of car behavior in a variety of situations that can crop up in real life. Something akin to what pilots go through in flight simulators. The brain and muscle memory gets trained to finely calibrate the required set and sequence of actions. I have introduced this to my daughter as well, and she has fantastic lines through corners.


2. Twice it happened that I was driving within the city, whilst the Forza soundtrack started playing and somehow for awhile I lost the sense of reality and started living in the game driving like I would in the game - not good! Since then I make sure that the said sound track is not part of my driving song list.

[Dr.Procastinate]

Originally Posted by SmartCat

- Upgrading video game car with better tyres, suspension, adding turbo etc gave me an itch to keep upgrading my first car -> I changed tyres, alloys, headlights, air filter etc

- After an accident (I was not driving but sitting in passenger seat), I was looking for a "Reset" (R) button which would magically give me a new but same car with all the damages gone.

Attachment 2464253

Well, I too wish that we had a reset button , just so that I can stay away from my Honda A.S.S who is hell bent on charging me 2k or more every time I take my bike there for servicing.

[NomadSK]

I have never played Video games based on cars. Hence won’t be able to comment “how it influenced my driving habits”

However, if you install a camera on any junction of an Indian major city road, I’m sure the out come will be similar to a video game

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by Kkumar

In pilot’s training, a part of the training is carried out in simulators, this is to familiarise the student pilot with the layout of the cockpit and improve his hand-eye-leg coordination. But one really learns to fly when he is doing it in a real plane in a real world.

When it comes to video games such a thing is not there because it has been purely developed for entertainment and not for teaching. It’s true that they may have better reflexes but they will be learning more to do the wrong thing than the right thing. This can be seen by the way the youngsters ride their bikes. So my take is that video games are a bad influence when it comes to real world driving.

For quite a while, most type training for commercial pilots is done primarily on full motion simulators. They are so good, it doesn’t make sense to use a real airplane, which is hugely expensive, for training purposes. On some types, you can actually obtain your type rating without flying the actual aircraft itself.

Training hours on the SIM count towards your total time and are logged in your personal flight book. E.g. up towards 20 hours can be simulator time towards your Instrument rating and even 50 hours towards a commercial rating. At least that is how it was some years ago. But the general direction is actually towards more and more simulator versus actual flying.

It also is the only way to train for all kinds of emergency situations, without endangering anybody’s life.

Even for a Private Pilot license you can log some simulator time. However, and here is the catch, all of the above requires certified simulators, which are very very expensive.

And this is the thing, a home computer or even a dedicated game controller doesn’t come anywhere near the real driving experience. An important part of learning to drive is to get a feel for the pedals, various levers, acceleration forces etc. Very few simulators offer that level of realism. Most of the car simulators out there are games and we’re never designed with teaching to drive in mind.

I have driven a professional car simulator at Stanford university and I was not impressed, some of my colleagues got motion thickness, almost immediately.

It doesn’t stack up to a full motion level D Flight simulator.

Still, it can be a very useful add on as part of one’s training. Even as a pilot I used Microsoft Flight Simulator to help me prepare my route and familiarise myself with the airports and terrain enroute.

There is quite a bit of research done on this topic around the world. They all come to more or less the same conclusion.
Not surprising by and large racing games tend to lead to increased risk taking or to more precise:

Including this and other research on racing games and violent media, the strongest predictors for risky driving are still younger age, less driving experience and male gender,

The full article

Racing video games may influence later behavior
By Kathryn Doyle, Reuters Health

(Reuters Health) – Playing an intense racing game makes players more likely to take risks like speeding, passing on the wrong side, running red lights or using a cell phone in a simulated driving task shortly afterwards, according to a new study.



An hostess plays a car racing game during the video game show in Paris September 17, 2009. REUTERS/Charles Platiau
People with more adventurous personalities were more inclined to take risks, and more intense games led to greater risk taking, the authors write in the journal Injury Prevention.

Other research has found a connection between racing games and inclination to risk-taking while driving, so the new results broaden that evidence base, said lead author of the new study Mingming Deng of the School of Management at Xi’an Jiaotong University in Xi’an, China.

“I think racing gamers should be paid more attention in their real driving,” Deng told Reuters Health by email.

The researchers included 40 students at the university, mostly men, in the study. The students took personality tests at the start and were divided randomly into two groups.

Half of the students played a circuit-racing type driving game that included time trials on a racecourse similar to Formula 1 racing, for about 20 minutes while the other group played computer solitaire, a neutral game for comparison.

After a five minute break, all the students took the Vienna Risk-Taking Test, viewing 24 “risky” videotaped road traffic situations on a computer screen presented from the driver’s perspective, including driving up to a railroad crossing whose gate has already started lowering. How long the viewer waits to hit the “stop” key for the maneuver is considered a measure of their willingness to take risks on the road.

Students who had been playing the racing game waited an average of almost 12 seconds to hit the stop button compared to 10 seconds for the solitaire group. The participants’ experience playing these types of games outside of the study did not seem to make a difference.

“Games may affect a player’s behavior, but also, individuals who play these games may have characteristics that are different than those who do not game at all,” said Catherine C. McDonald, assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing in Philadelphia.

“The relationships are likely complex and do not go in just one direction,” McDonald, who was not part of the new study, told Reuters Health by email

Based on the personality tests, people who were more adventurous were inclined to take more risks than those who were less adventurous. Other personality aspects like extraversion and emotionality did not seem to make a difference.

In a second experiment, the researchers compared the effects of a calm racing game and a more violent one. They found that the more violent one resulted in more risk taking behavior on the Vienna Risk-Taking Test and a greater increase in skin conductance, a measure of physiological excitement.

“I think there is confounding here and I do not view this as clear evidence of a link between gaming and taking risks when actually driving on-road,” said Teresa Senserrick, associate professor of Transport and Road Safety (TARS) Research at The University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.

It’s not surprising that a game that encourages risk taking would result in risk-taking behavior on another computerized driving task five minutes later, but it’s not clear if this would translate to a real-world driving situation, she said.

“My major issue with the study is that no information was sought about the participants’ actual driving: if they even had a driver’s license, if so, how long they had been driving, or how much driving do they typically do,” Senserrick told Reuters Health by email.

Without accounting for these, nothing meaningful can really be derived from the study, she said.

Adults in China begin driving much later than those in other countries, so participants from a Chinese university could include many who have never actually driven a car, she said.

Including this and other research on racing games and violent media, the strongest predictors for risky driving are still younger age, less driving experience and male gender, Senserrick said.

“Keeping attention to the road at all times is a real challenge and there is no harm cautioning against anything that could have a negative impact,” including playing a racing game immediately beforehand, she said.

“I say the same, for example, in my work with young drivers – you don’t want to jump in a car immediately after a break up with your girlfriend/boyfriend or a fight with a best friend or parent, for example,” she said.

“A lot of things can impact on where our ‘headspace’ is when we are driving and we can’t always avoid this, but we can try to be mindful that we might not be in the best state to drive and purposefully draw our attention away from distracting thoughts and influences to concentrating on the immediate traffic environment,” Senserrick said

Jeroen

[Dr.Procastinate]

Originally Posted by Kkumar

In pilot’s training, a part of the training is carried out in simulators, this is to familiarise the student pilot with the layout of the cockpit and improve his hand-eye-leg coordination. But one really learns to fly when he is doing it in a real plane in a real world.

When it comes to video games such a thing is not there because it has been purely developed for entertainment and not for teaching. It’s true that they may have better reflexes but they will be learning more to do the wrong thing than the right thing. This can be seen by the way the youngsters ride their bikes. So my take is that video games are a bad influence when it comes to real world driving.

Yes, Videogames are not exactly educational tools but they do have wider accessibility than proper driving simulators in our country, and most likely are one of the reasons youngsters driving rash

Originally Posted by Everlearner

The line between real and virtual world is blurring. This also means that the line between reality and fiction is blurring. If you have a look at all the AI generated images circulating on social media, you realize that they can be easily mistaken as real ones.

How is this relevant to driving?
The human behavior is shaped by experiences whether real or virtual. If you keep driving a car rashly in simulated world, there is a high chance (not always though) that some of it may impact your behavior in real world because of how the brain is configured/conditioned.

I do accept this. It is important that people learn to differentiate between the real and the virtual world and act responsibly. I think it is a good start to act resposibly even in the virtual space so that the person is conditioned to think the same way in real life and this cause might be helped by game developers designing games in which players will have to be a law-abiding citizen (looking at you, Rockstar, EA, Ubisoft et al )

Originally Posted by roy_libran

A couple of points from me:

1. Playing a modern, realistic Driving game (e.g. Forza) goes a very long way in developing good understanding and approximation of car behavior in a variety of situations that can crop up in real life. Something akin to what pilots go through in flight simulators. The brain and muscle memory gets trained to finely calibrate the required set and sequence of actions. I have introduced this to my daughter as well, and she has fantastic lines through corners.


2. Twice it happened that I was driving within the city, whilst the Forza soundtrack started playing and somehow for awhile I lost the sense of reality and started living in the game driving like I would in the game - not good! Since then I make sure that the said sound track is not part of my driving song list.

I can very well attest this fact of getting transported to another world. I had a couple of songs on my playlist that come from the Default NFS:MW audiotrack. I had a momentary increase in acceleration while driving the car when these songs came on, but fortunately, returned to my senses the very next moment. And yes, the songs are permanently banished from my on-the-road playlist.

Originally Posted by NomadSK

I have never played Video games based on cars. Hence won’t be able to comment “how it influenced my driving habits”

However, if you install a camera on any junction of an Indian major city road, I’m sure the out come will be similar to a video game

Well, I'm positive that some of the traffic cam footages will make videogames look saner than reality.

[madhukarmohan]

Originally Posted by Dr.Procastinate

Pros :

Better understanding of vehicle and the road :
I would say this is one of the major points in favour. I find people with extensive 'virtual' driving experience taking lesser time to get comfortable on the road. I felt myself able to drive the car passably on the first day of my driving lessons and learnt from a few gaming buddies that they had a similar experience. I don't know if this is due to familiarity or confidence, but it definitely has made a difference!

Better reflexes :
Well, people with gaming experience do better in unexpected situations against non-gamers with similar real-life road experience, as far as I have observed. I believe this is from the familiarity of handling similar situations in the virtual space.

This is very much true in my case as well. In addition to the above advantages, video games help in improving many traits like critical thinking, strategy, creativity, focus, team-work, etc. Even though it has so much of fun and addiction, I don't know why the Gen Z is not much interested in it compared to the Millennials

[SS-Traveller]

Originally Posted by Dr.Procastinate

How driving in the virtual space affects the road manners of the drivers in real life. In my eyes, this is going to important as the current bunch of people (including me) who are getting their licenses now are from a time where access to a computer/console was easy in their childhood and have had the opportunity to play a multitude of driving/racing games and might have spent a lot of time doing it.
I have tried to summarize the positive and negative effects of video games on my real-life driving style, as perceived by me :-

Pros :
Better understanding of vehicle and the road :

Better reflexes :

Cons :
Throttle control :

A certain disregard for rules ! :

I am strongly against looking for any advantage at all that can be gained in real world driving, with skills developed by playing video games. Yet, even our regulating authorities think that automated driving testing tracks, which are a bit like those video games where one drives around a track, are the best way to award a full driving licence to an applicant. I had written about the disadvantages of automated driving testing systems in this thread (Why automated driving licence testing in India produces dangerous drivers):

Originally Posted by SS-Traveller

Let us quickly look at what dangers and disadvantages the automated testing procedure entails.

1. Slow speed driving:

2. No concept of the dynamics of traffic flow and requirement of crash avoidance space around his vehicle:

3. No hazard perception testing:

4. No knowledge of right-of-way rules and common courtesy for other road users:

5. No understanding of the power and acceleration capability of his vehicle:

6. No preparation, practice or testing for emergency braking, use of indicators, high & low beams, hazard flashers and fog lamps:

7. No evaluation of setting up and use of rearview mirrors or head checks:

All the points above are also included in the cons of using video gaming experience to start driving in the real world. In addition, some more points:

8. No seat-of-the-pants physical sense of driving: Video games do not let one feel the acceleration, braking and turning forces on the body, and at higher speeds, one loses control of the car / bike just by taking a corner too fast, or flooring the accelerator in a very powerful car. I have seen a newbie driver let go of the steering wheel on a sharp turn as he slid off the seat; people frequently let go of the brake pedal under emergency braking as the ABS pedal shudder kicks in. Why do you think excellent gamers with razor-sharp reflexes run off the road in reality? Because physics takes over!

9. No development of peripheral vision: Gamers are focussed on the screen. In the real world, driving means being aware of what is happening in a 360-degree area around the car, through peripheral vision as well as multiple mirrors.

While I agree that gaming develops excellent reflexes, one does not need those reflexes if one has a planned drive on a public road (unlike competitive racing on a track). Extremely rarely do those crazy incidents happen where one can save oneself by lightning reflexes. Also, while we might have great reflexes, other road users will usually not, and that is what leads to crashes.

God save us from virtual driving experts who think their driving skills will keep them (and others) safe on public roads.

[revvharder]

Originally Posted by SmartCat

- After an accident (I was not driving but sitting in passenger seat), I was looking for a "Reset" (R) button which would magically give me a new but same car with all the damages gone.

Too late for you to use but i guess newbies will surely benefit from this button

[dicor]

Yes, they do help and influence, someone influenced by NFS most wanted, will not leave a chance to do rash driving in suitable conditions. I can tell you from, my personal experience.

My wife is a careful driver too and she loves to drive. When we married, I realized she needed to improve her parking skills. So I installed Dr Driving on her mobile. She learnt the science behind reverse parking, parallel and angular parking and now she is a pro. She also learnt the difference between dynamics while taking a U-turn of a car, a long SUV and a long trailer.

[ZenMaster]

I think the biggest pro of video game driving experience is the almost instantaneous "confidence" you get against oncoming traffic. This is very useful in India where two way roads are the norm and especially in Kerala where even National Highways are single lane bi-directional roads.

In addition to my natural instinct for driving, I think racing/driving games helped a lot when having to face vehicles that appear suddenly from the opposite lane.

Instead of getting confused, I usually instinctively knew how to react.

It also helps a lot in judging the speed of other vehicles visually on the road and plan overtakes/maneuvers.


My sister is afraid of driving even though she has a license. From what I was able to understand she is afraid of the oncoming traffic and freezes if she suddenly sees a truck coming head-on.
I have advised her to play driving/racing in order to improve her reaction but she just laughs it off.