Impediment of visual orientation by the Swiss National Panel of Driving Instructors and an appropriate alternative.

This paper concerns visual orientation by drivers and the description of an inefficient training method. Visual training of novice drivers by Swiss driving instructors contains directions to fixate the gaze at a certain point ahead and to move the gaze ahead as the car moves forwards. A study involving driving through a narrowed road situation showed that all drivers, including instructors, in fact take in extra eye movements to judge the situation accurately. The author recommends that driver training should be altered to take into account the different sub-tasks involved in visual processing. For the covering abstract see ITRD E113725 (C 22328 CD-ROM).