DriverLab studies people, not cars
TECHNOLOGY: Advanced simulator gives insights on aging, drug use behind the wheel
Driving simulators have long been a part of the automotive industry, but the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute’s DriverLab goes beyond that, incorporating them into their CEAL program: Challenging Environment Assessment Lab.
Driving the simulator is, quite frankly, a blast. It’s a converted Audi A3, and the second you close the door it feels like you’re in the same road cocoon you experience in your own car. The mirrors sport video that matches what is taking place in the surrounding streetscape, so you are immersed 360 degrees into that world. It takes a few minutes to get used to slightly heavy steering and a delayed throttle, but you are engaged in driving immediately. Other cars are idiots in simulators, too, with a big SUV stubbornly dawdling ahead of me on a highway, then speeding up as I go to pass. For a very fleeting moment, I consider just bashing into him because — simulator. Science prevails. I drop back.
There are several simulators at the facility, big pods housed in the bowels of the Institute that can be adapted and switched out to address everything from best practices for patients’ use of stairs to bathroom safety. Another pod has an ice floor, and provided the research for perhaps one of the smartest improvements in walking in winter: ratings for boot grip in cold weather. Now, just like winter tires, you can look for footwear with actual scientific ratings on its effectiveness. No more going ass over teakettle, as my mother would have said, because you were faked out by oversized tread based on design, not science.
DriverLab, the driving simulator at the Institute is one of a kind. While car manufacturers use some extraordinary simulators to create and fine tune everything from fuel efficiency to handling to safety features, this one is all about the driver. Specifically, the impact of health on driving.
Dr. Geoff Fernie simply calls himself the Senior Scientist on DriverLab, but his business card sports a veritable cavalcade of degrees and appointments. He is passionate, as is his entire team, about the prospects for this simulator, both intricate and far reaching. While car manufacturers push their engineers and designers for cutting-edge safety, people like Fernie focus on the driver, and how our changing world will impact their ability to drive, to drive safely, and to do both for as long as possible.
DriverLab examines several key human interactions with driving. Because they are a rehabilitation centre, they recognize the huge implications of opioids on driving performance. The simulator allows them to test actual subjects with various drugs in their systems; they also study the effects of drowsy driving by using people who are sleepy.
The elephant in the lab? Pot. The coming legislative changes are already presenting legal questions surrounding how to detect a drug, regulate its use and punish those who operate outside the law. Marijuana presents its own challenges, however, with a paucity of legal definitions about how the drug impacts different people, how its long-term presence in the system creates impairment (or if it does) and how to prosecute all of the above. The health science being explored at the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute in the DriverLab crucible will no doubt be playing a role in fields far beyond the medical one.
How important is this simulator? It might be the key to keeping you on the road as you age. Rather than a one-size-fits-all approach to aging drivers, Fernie suggests scenarios of graduated or limited licences.
“We’re all aware of changes that occur visually, and often older drivers refrain from driving at night, for instance” he says. But he offers up the fact that if eyesight becomes compromised, it is usually accompanied by a deterioration of other faculties, like hearing and memory.
With DriverLab, scientists can explore the coming implications of automated features and how they might be integrated into how we drive, and what we drive, to keep drivers safer, longer.
Research scientist Bruce Haycock shares Fernie’s enthusiasm on the project, calling it “the most advanced driving simulator in Canada, comparable to the top in the world, with unique features to create the most realistic driving experience globally.”
He told me this before I stepped into the vehicle. When actual rain starting pouring onto the windshield as I “drove,” I knew he wasn’t kidding. The other incredibly realistic addition that is missing on other simulators is oncoming headlights. Usually in a simulator, you get two dull oncoming orbs to note a car heading toward you. In DriverLab, they intensify as they get closer, actually mimicking that annoying LED glare so many hate.
The cost of this unit is about $4 million, though as Dr. Sunjoo Advani, president of IDT, the company that designed it in conjunction with Toronto Rehab, explained, they are able to cross platforms with three of the other units at the facility to augment and test different scenarios. It would cost significantly more as a stand-alone.
But it’s a small price to pay for extraordinary technology that is paving the way to understanding how opioids, impairment, physical conditioning and age will impact our driving.