This document presents and discusses visualization technologies through driving simulators and its application in transportation engineering, regarding the road project and their help in improving road safety. The article was prepared aiming at contributing to the development and technological modernization of part of the studies carried out in Brazil, related to safety on highways, which is nearly 15 years outdated compared to state-of-art in this research line by pioneer countries such as the U.S., France, Italy, and Germany. This fact contributed to a national tragic scenario, where, for the past two years, 42,844 people died due to traffic crashes, a number that places the Brazilian roads as the top dangerous in the world and the Brazil as the 5th country among the record holders in traffic deaths. This paper presents a technical description and the potentialities and limitations of driving simulators to conduct experiments that show natural realism, with the advantage of controlling the many study variables, without risk to users. Additionally, it describes the main types of driving simulators in the market, with the characterization of the three levels of sophistication - basic level, intermediate level and high fidelity simulators.
Driving Simulators; Roadway Safety; Geometric Design
