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Norway is currently ranked as one of the top nations in regard to road safety. However, continued efforts are applied as we stretch towards a goal of zero deaths and serious injuries in road traffic accidents. In this paper we explore if Norwegian driver education could benefit from simulator training. Possible advantages are cost effectiveness, environmentally friendly training, repeatability, accessibility to different scenarios (accident scenarios and dangerous situations, darkness and snow outside of winter, difficult weather conditions and extreme road traffic density), the possibility to make errors in a safe environment, and interaction with new technology such as advanced driver assistant systems. However, there are challenges such as how to increase the number of simulators in Norway, and legal obstacles as current legislations require all mandatory parts of the Norwegian driver education to be conducted on the road. Our overall impression is that the driver education in Norway could have advantages in applying a more systematic approach to simulator training.

On average, more than two people are killed or severely injured every day in Norway in road traffic. Hence, elements that benefit a decrease in this number will be welcomed, such as "Advanced Driver-Assist System" (ADAS) technology. However, increasing technology in cars might require new driving skills compared to those taught today and the transition to more and new technology could potentially increase the accident rate. In the safety industry, it is well known that training for new and more automated technology is important. This raises a question: How does the transition to new, more complex and more automated technology affect driver training and the education of driver instructors? At the present time, there are no clear answers to this question. However, it seems that there is a need for a discussion and potentially a redefinition on which driver skills should be required, and how to implement these skills. This is what we attempt to discuss in this paper.

In recent decades, simulators have become an increasingly accepted part of training in sectors like aviation, medicine, and the petroleum industry. Some countries like the Netherlands, the UK, and Finland have accepted simulators as a part of driver’s education, but in Norway the use of simulators is both limited and restricted. This experimental study aimed to determine whether simulator-based training in night driving could be beneficial compared to traditional Norwegian training. Two equal-sized groups of learner drivers completed both simulator training and traditional training, and both training sessions were followed by a multiple-choice test mapping the learner drivers’ theoretical knowledge on the topic. The results show that theoretical learning outcome is higher from simulator training compared to traditional training, indicating that an increased use of simulators could be beneficial in driver training.

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