The recent tragic Taconic Parkway accident in New York, where awareness was a possible issue makes the following article by Walt Mossberg at the Wall Street Journal very relevant. The software is called DRIVESHARP:
Decline in Abilities
If your driving is getting a bit worse as you grow older, it may be because of a natural decline in the brain's ability to process visual information. Some scientists believe that, as people age, their capability to rapidly grasp and act on what their eyes see can degrade.
And one of the activities most affected is driving, a task that demands you simultaneously track multiple moving objects, often at the edge of your field of vision.
The decline of this capability may be one of the reasons the elderly have to stop driving. But this problem doesn't affect only the oldest people.
Some experts say that the speed and accuracy of the brain's visual processing can begin to gradually decline in middle age or even earlier. Now there's a software program, for both PCs and Macs, that claims it can "train the brain to think and react faster on the road" by putting a user through brief, repetitive exercises aimed at bolstering his or her visual-processing prowess. It's called DriveSharp, and is from a San Francisco-based company called Posit Science (positscience.com), which also produces other brain-training programs.
DriveSharp isn't a driving simulator, but a pair of simple-looking visual memory games, plus assessment tests, that Posit Science says are based on published scientific research.
The company says it purchased a training technique that researchers have proven to be effective at improving visual processing. Posit Science makes some strong claims for DriveSharp.
It asserts that people who use the program as directed (at least three times a week for 20 minutes at a time) can cut their "crash risk" by 50% and stop their cars 22 feet sooner at 55 miles per hour. It says these users can expand by 200% their "useful field of view," the area within which you can take in details with a single glance. And the company adds that, if you use DriveSharp as instructed for a total of 10 hours, its positive effects can last for several years. To back up these claims, Posit Science cites a number of scientific studies and articles published in well-known journals.
AWAKE AT THE WHEEL:
There are some interesting tools for assisting drivers who get drowsy while driving.
