Design of a Guidebook for the Acquisition and Use of Driving Simulators for Training Transit Bus Operators

The Transit Cooperative Research Program of the Transportation Research Board recently sponsored an 18-month research program to develop a set of guidelines that transit agency trainers and managers could use to determine if driving simulators could help meet training objectives and, if so, what kind of simulators to acquire. The end product of this research is a set of task-based criteria that lead to specific simulator characteristics. That is, one should purchase a training simulator based upon what tasks need to be trained. This paper reports on the limited available data on the effectiveness of driving simulators for training, the task clusters various technologies can train, and the decision aids developed for transit agencies that actually have applicability to any potential user of training simulation. The project included a literature review, visits to driving simulator users nationwide, a review of European simulator programs, and the collection of training data and accident data from both users and non-users of driving simulators. Instructors, students, course graduates, and managers were interviewed. The results of the research are presented and a simulator evaluation methodology is proposed.