Scrolling through my Facebook feed one day, I came across an ad posted by Sweden's Road and Transport Research Institute, calling for volunteers to test the viability of a new driving aid system. The requirement to participate in the program was simple; the volunteer must have a valid Swedish driving license (B), and have driven at least a certain stipulated number of kilometers since having acquired the driver's license. The aim of the session was to use a newly developed driving aid and provide feedback about the experience. Intrigued, I sent in my response and received a link which I could use to register for a time slot on the simulator.
On the given day, which was a Saturday, I walked in, met the researcher who explained to me the plan. I was told that I would be introduced to a new driver assist system, but the researcher was deliberately vague about how it would function, in order for me to be able to give the best possible feedback. I started off on a simulated version of the European Motorway 4 (E4), where the simulated motorway had an extra lane. The simulator equipment was identical to what one could find in the cockpit of a Volvo sedan. It was an automatic, so no clutch pedal, or gear stick. My introduction gave me some info about who I was supposed to be; a person who was in a bit of a hurry, and I was going to be driving slightly above the legal limit, i.e. would be doing around 130 on a 110 road. As soon as I started by pressing the accelerator for the first time, the car would begin to automatically accelerate till it reached 130 km/h where it would stay, unless I applied the brakes, but the car would resume to speed up as soon as I let go of the brakes. This was of course quite a bit unlike normal driving, but was easy enough to work with. Once we started, the gas pedal was really unnecessary, as the simulator would do the acceleration itself and once we reached 130 km/h, even flooring the pedal wouldn't make us go any faster.
Here's a clip of me at the controls
As I was driving, the dashboard lit up with an alert about approaching emergency vehicles; it gave me a little extra time to plan how best I could get out of the way to give the emergency vehicles free and unhindered passage. The simulator session lasted close to 40 minutes and I'd got and reacted to a bunch of those alerts. At one point, I was on the left most lane at the max speed of 130 km/h and all of the right lanes had traffic, and I really couldn't move across as quickly as I'd have liked, and neither could I go any faster, due to the limitations of the simulator session, but I did point this out to the expert, that in real life, I'd have floored the gas to try and get myself out of the way faster.
Post driving, I was asked to fill in a questionnaire which even included video clips of other versions of similar driver aids, and I was asked to grade them in terms of most helpful, least distracting and so on. Participating in this survey reinforced my conviction about how committed the Swedish state is, to achieve their Zero traffic fatality goal.