Text: Jack Rix / Photos: Tom Wood

20th December 2007

I’m driving in the middle lane of the M6 in a Jaguar S-Type, listening to Radio 2, and enjoying a cloudless winter morning. A lorry pulls right out in front of me, so I dart to the right and accelerate hard to overtake.

Unfortunately, the car ahead suddenly slows as the lanes narrow for a set of roadworks. A rush of adrenaline surges through my body as I go into panic mode. I’m hard on the brakes, but still going too fast to stop. So I brace myself for the impact. But it doesn’t come. Instead, I miraculously sail through the vehicle in front like it’s a ghost, and continue driving up the motorway as if nothing has happened.

It’s at times like this you’re thankful you’re behind the wheel of the UK’s most advanced driving simulator, rather than in a real car. I’m at the University of Leeds to test out its new hi-tech piece of kit, and also to take part in a scientific study. And two Auto Express readers are here to participate, too. The Highways Agency is concerned with the consistency and quality of motorway signs at roadworks, and is funding a trial using the £1million machine.

Its test concentrates on three scenarios – a road narrowing, a reduction in lanes from three to two and a contraflow system. These are all incorporated into a 25-minute drive on a motorway based on the M6. And for added realism, there’s the odd emergency manoeuvre thrown in. The aim is to find out the minimum number of signs needed to warn drivers about upcoming hazards. Too many cause clutter, while too few result in confusion.

What grabs you first about the simulator is its sheer size. Filling a floor area of more than 100 square metres, it’s one serious piece of kit. The second thing you notice is its incredible range and speed of movement, although it felt very fluid inside the cabin.

	My hands started to feel a bit clammy and began to shake. I didn’t feel nauseous, just dizzy, but I knew I had to stop

Hamish Jamson, the facility manager, explained: “The smoother you drive, the more realistic the simulator feels. Sudden jerks of the steering wheel or prods of the brake and accelerator can produce a lag in the motors’ responses.” Armed with this advice, it was my turn to take it for a spin.

After a short practice run, designed to acclimatise me to the controls, I began my recorded test. Pulling away from the hard shoulder, I encountered the first set of roadworks after about five minutes’ driving. The lanes got tighter, and I had my lorry ‘moment’. Soon after that, I experienced the contraflow and road narrowing.

Although there were subtle differences in the signs, I couldn’t tell how they affected my drive. But the results gathered by the machine – which also monitored where I was looking, as well as my position and speed – will.

Next it was Auto Express reader Natalie Howell’s turn. Sadly, there was a problem during her practice run. After only a few minutes in the simulator she started to feel ill. Natalie, from Tunbridge Wells, Kent, said: “My hands started to feel a bit clammy and began to shake. I didn’t feel nauseous, just dizzy, but I knew I had to stop.” Hamish explained this condition isn’t uncommon. In fact, it has even been given a name – simulator sickness.

Despite having to stop before taking part in the research project, Natalie was able to experience how realistic the machine is. She said: “It was like a video game to start with, but then the surroundings just became reality.”

Matt Anstiss, from Birmingham, was our other guinea pig. He flew through his practice session and, unlike me, completed the entire 25-minute drive without a hitch. Matt said: “I reacted to the lorry pulling out just as I would on the real motorway – shouting at the computer-generated driver, and instinctively jerking the wheel to avoid a collision.”

Interestingly, the purpose of this manoeuvre has nothing to do with the road sign research. Instead, it’s intended to allow the University of Leeds to gauge how different people react to real-life anxiety when in the simulator. But Hamish said: “Instead of getting overly angry, most people tend to laugh. It’s something to do with a sub-conscious awareness that the situation isn’t actually happening.”

This is a major limitation of simulators compared with a real-life driving study. But the problem is outweighed by their advantages.

Firstly, they enable testers to create repeatable situations to examine different drivers’ reactions to exactly the same set of circumstances. A second key benefit is safety – something highlighted by my time in the simulator. Hamish said: “You shouldn’t judge it on how accurately it replicates a sense of speed, how much fun it is, or whether the S-Type’s engine note is perfect or not. The key aim is that it immerses the driver in the situations, provoking genuine reactions.”

With both my data and Matt’s logged for the study, we had hoped to compare how well we did. But, as Hamish explained, this wasn’t the point. “It’s not a video game where people can take away their results to see who drove the best. Every participant is just a single point in a distribution,” he explained. Only after the research has been completed can the results be extracted by comparing the data from every driver. “We’ll then submit a report to the Highways Agency, with our recommendations over the best solutions for signage at roadworks,” Hamish added.

Producing this kind of research information is what the simulator is all about. Over the next 12 months, it will be used for another Highways Agency project testing new road designs to see if they can counteract fatigue. This will involve motorists driving when drowsy to see how different layouts affect concentration.

And this is one study the Leeds simulator is perfect for. After all, you certainly don’t want to be doing that sort of risky test out on a real road...

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