An International Driving Simulator: Recognizing the Sense of a Car Body by the Simulator

It is difficult to drive smoothly when overseas because of international differences in traffic rules or car configurations. To solve this problem, we developed a driving simulator for practicing driving under different road and car configurations. For the roads in the simulator, we extracted road data from Google Maps, made 3D roads, and added traffic rules. We examined the influence on a driver of the difference between driving right- and left-hand drive cars, and whether the driver can obtain a sense of right- and left-hand driving on the simulator. Experimental results using the simulator clarified the difference in influence between right- and left-hand drive cars. We found that Japanese who usually drive a right-hand drive car in left-hand traffic tend to cross lane lines when driving a left-hand drive car.