Interventions for Improving Road Surveillance for Teen Drivers with Autism

Learning to drive for any teen is a challenging process, especially for those who are on the autism spectrum. Challenges with executive function place extra demands for those teens and young adults. To better understand these difficulties, Nathaniel Wilson et al. consolidated all the literature from January 2000 to August 2017 that was guiding “the design of training interventions” for those on the spectrum. Wilson’s work captured the objectives, findings, and limitations of 27 studies published during that period. This paper extends Wilson’s review by summarizing the research done using Wilson’s search criteria to May 2022 to better understand what interventions have been developed or studied, what elements of driving behavior are these interventions focused on improving, and what technologies and intervention techniques are being used to improve those behaviors. The final objective of this paper is to discuss design strategies that utilize game-based training with multi-modal monitoring to develop low-cost and scalable interventions to improve road surveillance and other driving behaviors. These design strategies include a full-function comprehensive training simulator, hybrid virtual reality for desktops, and very targeted solutions aimed at improving a particular skill. Low-cost and scalable interventions that can improve the driving behavior of this population, especially focusing on road surveillance, looks to be a promising area of research.