Tacoma Police Test Virtual Driving Trainer Costly Simulator Could Cut Insurance, Maintenance Outlay For City

It doesn’t look like a Ferrari.

It doesn’t drive like one either.

But it costs four times as much.

Tacoma police and other city officials have been testing a driving simulator they say could help train the city’s drivers as well as cut its insurance and vehicle maintenance costs.

The city has made no commitment to buy a simulator, which is made by I-SIM of Murray, Utah. The one they’re testing costs about $600,000.

Company representatives recently parked a portable simulator, mounted in a semitruck, behind the police station at East 35th Street and McKinley Avenue for officers to test.

Here’s how the simulator works:

The driver sits in the cab placed in front of a 180-degree wrap-around screen. The cab is mounted on hydraulics, which can roll and pitch the cab as well as vibrate and jerk it to simulate sudden stops and driving over rough terrain.

In another room, a software engineer can call up several different driving situations and control any one of up to 38 cars on the screen.

Sometimes he leads officers on high-speed chases or makes them pursue cars weaving like drunken drivers.

The simulator’s computerized equipment and interchangeable cabs allow it to mimic the feel of a ponderous dump truck, a fire engine full of water or a police car with emergency lights flashing and siren blaring.

“It’s about as realistic as it’s going to get,” said officer Henry Gill, who test drove the simulator. “The steering wheel felt like the car needed a front-end job and you got no real brake feel.”

One officer tried stopping a “drunken” driver whose antics behind the wheel mirrored many of the maneuvers the officer had seen in real life.

Which is why the police department is interested in the simulator. Officials hope to use it to teach officers to make the right decisions when in a high-speed pursuit or other serious driving situations.

In the simulator, officers can practice driving on crowded streets or stopping drunken drivers without endangering innocent motorists and pedestrians, said Jack Redman, an I-SIM marketer.

“The reason airlines pilots are not scared when they fly through thunderstorms is because they have been through the worst possible landings on earth in a simulator,” Redman said.

The same logic can be applied to police training, he said.