Great Conversations: Can video games make us better drivers?

To get good at anything takes practice. Sure, some people just have natural gifts for certain tasks or processes, but most of us have to buckle down, put in the time, and learn. Race driving is no different, but what if we told you could get better without owning a car at all? Seems too good to be true—but one Hagerty Forums user thinks video games are helping him on his path to speed.

To be fair, it is slightly too good to be true. Playing video games is not a 100 percent replacement for seat time in a car at speed. (The physical stress on your muscles, for instance, or the mental pressure of risking real-dollar damage.) Digital driving can, however, allow a person to maximize the time they do get in a car on track. Learning etiquette and track features in today’s hyper-realistic video games can quite literally get a driver up to speed more efficiently.

That got us thinking. Could video games also help in more mundane traffic situations, too? At least a few driver’s education classes used to think so, though tech like this seems under-utilized in modern times. Is computer-mediated driving something worth undertaking at all, or should training be real-world and real-world only? Continue the conversation in the Hagerty Forums.