Safety Impacts of Truck Driving Simulator Training

The concern that entry-level truck drivers may not receive adequate training to safely operate a commercial motor vehicle (CMV) has long been held by the trucking industry, with several studies to support this perception. Despite the existence of a number of formal truck driver training schools and programs, there is substantial variation among the programs in terms of individual program design, methodology, evaluation criteria and content. The industry has become increasingly focused on improving CMV training programs, with the recognition that numerous studies have shown that productivity and decreased operational costs are the results of safe driving. The use of truck driving simulator technology is one particular area of interest. A range of potential benefits associated with truck driving simulators has been documented by research, including the following: a decrease in the need to use company equipment for training, due to the ability to replace a portion of the time spent on behind-the-wheel (BTW) training; the provision of a safer training environment, which allows for consequence-free driving scenarios; the ability for an automatic evaluation of driver performance; and the enhancement of training improvements and effectiveness. Despite all this, there has been little research on the effectiveness of truck driving simulator training on improving commercial driver safety performance completed to date. As a result, the evaluation of truck driving simulator training on driver safety performance has been identified as an industry research priority by the American Transportation Research Institute's (ATRI) Research Advisory Committee (RAC).