Assessing proneness to simulator sickness in a fixed-base driving simulator

This study explores inter-individual differences in proneness to simulator sickness between persons who prematurely quit a test drive in a fixed-base driving simulator and persons who successfully complete the entire test drive. Subjects were 65 experienced drivers (age range 30 - 80 years). Results show that significantly more senior drivers than middle aged drivers and significantly more drivers with poor eyesight suffered severe symptoms of simulator sickness. Among the elderly drivers those subjects with a lower mileage per year were more prone to suffer from simulator sickness than subjects with a higher traffic participation as car drivers. 90 % of the subjects, who had to quit because of simulator sickness could be correctly identified by means of the questionnaire, and 70,5 % of the subjects who did not suffer from any symptoms.