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Moose collisions injure and kill a multitude of animals and humans each year. While in-vehicle warning systems are under development, the evaluation of these systems is a challenging process. In comparison with traditional on-road instrumented vehicles, driving simulators offer safer testing environments, but pose validity concerns. To understand the validity issues, this study replicates and expands upon Robins's [1] on-road findings in “Moose Visibility Distance in Nighttime Highway Driving Conditions: A Preliminary Investigation”. The significant effect of moose location on perception time is supported while our data suggests that typical speed limits are even more problematic than Robins demonstrated. The results are discussed with a focus on understanding the validity of simulated driving and establishing future validation research directions.

Electronic navigational systems allow drivers to receive travel directions while driving, rather than preplanning a route. This additional attentional load on drivers might prove to be hazardous -- particularly for older adults who have greater difficulties multitasking and switching their attention between different parts of the visual field. A driving simulator was used to evaluate the perception time to critical events in the presence and absence of a navigation system with young (n=18, age=18.8years SD= 0.7years) and older drivers (n=15, age=73.1years, SD=6.1years). The results of this study indicated that though older drivers were slower to react to critical events, and both groups were faster to react to pedestrian incursions than sudden light changes, messages from the travel system did not interfere significantly with perception reaction time in either group.