Scientists at the University of Manchester, in the United Kingdom, argue that transporting nervous drivers into virtual reality could help them a lot in surpassing their driving-related phobias. The conclusion was drawn from a new set of experiments, which saw numerous volunteers being recruited and tested in the group's laboratories. The scientists argue that, in combination with established courses of therapy, virtual reality could lead to a massive improvement in the behavior that these people display while on the road, ScienceDaily reports.

“Phobias may develop from a real-life event but the level of anxiety and avoidance that results becomes wholly disproportionate to the incident that led to the phobia and can become a major disruption to the way people lead their lives. A fear of driving, whether it has developed following a road traffic accident or for other reasons, can escalate into a situation where individuals are too scared to drive at all,” UM School of Psychological Sciences expert Caroline Williams explains. She will be in charge of conducting the new series of experiments on driving and virtual reality.

“The advantage of using VRET [Virtual Reality Exposure Treatment] is that it can be carried out in a safe environment rather than on real roads, which in extreme cases could put the volunteers, therapists and possibly other road-users at risk through the adoption of defensive driving behaviors, such as braking harder or going slow on motorways, by the phobic subject. It also helps the person with a phobia to tolerate the level of exposure to the fear as it is tightly controlled,” the scientist adds.

The program helps expose volunteers to most of the situations they would otherwise experience on public roads, such as driving over tall bridges, or going past slow-moving cars. While this may seem to be extremely easy at first, many people find these simple tasks to be very troublesome, and adjust their own driving behavior accordingly. “Future studies could use the virtual treatment to tackle other phobias which could mean a major breakthrough in this type of therapy; the possibilities could be endless,” Williams adds. Funding for this study came from the European Union.