Development of a simple driving simulator and determination of the reference range of normative performance

ABSTRACT

Objective: To establish the reference range for assessment items of the ‘Simple Driving Simulator’ (SiDS) in a normative population and to compare performance of age-matched young adults with a traumatic brain injury (TBI) to this reference data.

Methods and procedures: Normative ranges were calculated from the data of 445 participants in the control group. Three performance ranges were established: ‘normal’, ‘borderline’ and ‘impaired’ defined using standard deviation cutoff values in the control group. The performance of 28 patients with a TBI, aged 18–35 years, was evaluated. The performance score for the TBI group in the ‘impaired range’ was calculated for each test item and used to make a synthetic judgment regarding the clinical value of the SiDS.

Main outcomes and results: In the control group, only 0.6% of the participants exhibited a performance in the impaired range on >2 items, compared to 33.2% for the TBI group.

Conclusions: We provide evidence that impaired performance on ≤2 items of the SiDS provides a sensitive criterion of ‘driving fitness’ in young adults after a TBI.

KEYWORDS:

• Traumatic brain injury
• driving fitness
• driving simulator

Acknowledgments

We express our gratitude to Ms Yoko Nakayama for measurements by SiDS and arrangement of these data.

Declaration of Interest Statement

The authors report no declarations of interest.