SCREENS OUT NASTY HABITS
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IN It could have happened to anyone. You were driving steadily down this narrow, winding village road, minding your own business. The sun was shining. Looking around you could see a few parked cars, the occasional pedestrian, a school up ahead, you hadn't a care in the world.
Your attention is grabbed by a woman on the opposite side of the road. . . she is waving to someone. . . but who? Suddenly from behind a parked minibus an 11-year-old boy comes running — straight into the middle of the road. Your heart leaps into your mouth, you hit the brakes like a ton of bricks but it's too late, you're going to hit him.
His mother raises her hands in horror and the last thing you see before hearing a sickening thud is his face staring up in terror. For a dazed moment you close your eyes "Oh God, please let it be a dream, it can't be happening to me."
When you open them again, something strange is happening. Instead of the sound of a truck engine idling there's only a gentle hum of a computer. You're not sitting in the cab, you're in a quiet room staring at a screen. There's no shattered boy, no distraught mother, just a sober display on the monitor in front of you. You've just taken part in an interactive video training programme on defensive driving — and you've failed miserably.
REALISTIC TRAINING
The disturbingly realistic training aid is the work of London-based interactive video specialists, Video Media. VM developed the defensive driving package following a request from Shell International, as VM's marketing manager Susan Nash explains: "Shell identified a training need. They had a lot of (vehicle) accidents — particularly in Third World countries like Africa and South America, so they decided to produce a defensive driving programme."
Shell asked VM, which produces interactive videos for the likes of British Rail and the Post Office, to develop the defensive driving system, which took seven months to make.
Although the programme was developed specifically for Shell, Nash is quick to point out that it is by no means restricted in its application. "Though the programme was made for Shell, it wanted a return on its investment (Nash says the average in
teractive video can cost more than E100,000) so it's a 'generic', and can be used by any company."
But what exactly is an interactive video, and how can it help reduce the carnage each year on Britain's roads?
Unlike a conventional training video, which you watch passively, the interactive video has the operator physically participating in the outcome of the storyline by taking decisions and entering commands, via a keyboard, into the computer.
In the case of the defensive driving video, the user is shown a view of the road on the screen that would normally be seen by an HGV driver from his cab. Make no mistake, this view is real — not a graphic representation as with a flight simulator — but an actual view of the road filmed using a video camera.
To give extra authenticity to the impression of being in an HGV, the video view is accompanied by an engine soundtrack complete with gear-changing. As the introductory voiceover says: "This computer may not look like a vehicle, but it puts you in the driver's seat and in a few moments you will use it to make critical driving decisions."
As the operator "drives" along the road he is confronted with a series of hazards with their imminence, and severity, indicated by "clues" (such as road signs) which the driver would normally see.
Each hazard is also preceded by a precise description of the scene including vehicle speed, time of day, traffic density and weather, along with details on the road itself, whether, for example, it is a dual carriageway or an A-road. This data is especially useful as it frequently indicates how much time you will have before an operator decision is required. As each potential disaster unfolds the operator has not only to take appropriate action (via the keyboard) to avoid the accident (this is done by choosing from a menu of "action" options displayed on the screen) but, more important, these actions must be taken at the right time if they are to have any beneficial result. This is where the VM video really comes into its own.
The accident scenarios thrown at the user are not simply a case of a car pulling out from a side road. Rather, like real life, they tend to be a series of related circumstances that together snowball to create a major incident.
If the user, working from the clues on the screen, takes the right action at the right time, then he, or she, will avoid an accident. The longer the decision is delayed, however, the worse the situation becomes, and fewer action options are left which could avert an accident.
ACTION TIME
While each accident situation develops at a different rate, within every one there is a specific "action time band" split into three sections: "in time"; "late"; and, worst of all, "too late". The computer flashes up the relevant action options according to the time sector within which the decision is taken. Once you've decided what course of action you want to take the result is then acted out by the live video on the screen, Once again what's shown on the screen is directly related to the time taken to make a decision, Make the right decision in the right time and you sail through an obstacle on the screen and carry on unscathed to meet the next hazard, accompanied by a jaunty chord played on a guitar. "When you get the twang you know you've done it right," says a rather superior voiceover.
Take the wrong decision, too late, and before your very eyes you actually crash into the hazard to the sound of deforming metalwork, breaking glass and what sounds remarkably like a hub cap slowly spinning to a stop on the road.
The consequences of each decision are presented first through the live action video, and then summarised in the form of a hazard report.
The key to survival, according to Nash, is fairly straightforward. "What you really