Driving phobia and driving simulators

A lot of people suffer from fear of driving or driving phobia. Because of bad experiences in the past they may get panic attacks when they drive a car. They are afraid they may lose control and cause an accident where they themselves or others die. People with fear of driving avoid driving a vehicle and this has a large inpact on their mobility and freedom of movement.

Phobias such as these can be treated by a behaviour therapy technique called exposure in vivo. People with fear of flying have been treated in a similar way: expose the person to the stimulus that invokes the fear and let them feel the fear for a longer period of time until the fear gradually reduces. This technique can be used effectively in a car driving simulator.

A driving simulator allows the therapist to choose the driving environment and this has a number of favourable properties:
- not serious can happen in a simulator while the task resembles driving very closely
- you can start with a simple task, for example an empty highway with no traffic, and then let the subject drive for an hour, first at low speed, and later at a regular speed of 120 km/h
- then, when fear is brought to a low level, introduce more traffic, and let the subject drive for an hour or until fear is reduced to a criterion level, using a fear assessment scale.
- when fear is low enough, introduce a different traffic environment, for example a village or town. First with not traffic and later with other traffic and pedestrians.

A few precautions are important:
- always make sure that frightening events are avoided: when an accident occurs in the simulator, make sure there are no fear inducing sound effects and let the vehicle drive on as if nothing happened
- make sure you start simple: the subject must be induced to continue driving and not to stop because of fear, because this is a reward that stimulates fear the next time.

This makes a car driving simulator an excellent tool for treatment of fear of driving, and when used properly, it can solve the problem to manageable levels in a few hours time.

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