The Aston research programme on driver behaviour involves several methods of data collection, most of them indirect. These include judgments, scale-ratings and questionnaires. To supplement these with more direct data on behaviour, a low-cost driving simulator was required. The simulator selected was based on an Acorn Archimedes personal computer with 2 megabytes of memory. The aims of this pilot study were first to assess the hardware and software for design problems; second to determine whether the simulator discriminated between groups of drivers, and finally to replicate and extend Hagen's (1975) experiment on sex and age differences in driving performance. This preliminary study supports n's (1975) findings with respect to significant sex differences in mean speed and maximum speed, mean accelerator input and maximum accelerator input. Males drove significantly faster and used the accelerator significantly more. However, while Hagen found that males were less consistent in their operation of the accelerator, no significant difference emerged in the current study with respect to mean accelerator pedal use, although females exhibited greater variability in the maximum accelerator pedal measure. However, given that this study found significant differences between young and old males on this measure, it is likely that age was a confounding factor in the Hagen study. While the means for Hagen's groups of subjects were similar to those of the young groups in this study, the age range was greater. With respect to position on road, compared with young females, males in this study drove closer to the centre as in Hagen (1975). Males also used the brake pedal significantly more.
Abstract