# The Impact of Gamifications and Serious Games on Driving under Unfamiliar Traffic Regulations
## 1 Introduction  
When driving under unfamiliar traffic regulations--as is often the case when driving overseas--the interaction among the driver, vehicle, and road environment can be very challenging and can, therefore, lead to safety concerns. The New Zealand Ministry of Transport report revealed that adjusting to New Zealand traffic rules (i.e., keep-left traffic regulation) was a challenge for drivers who inhabit keep-right countries (e.g., the United States of America and China) [1]. The challenges included determining the correct traffic flow, the incorrect use of vehicle controls, and remembering to keep left. As a result, such drivers were often involved in intersection collisions, single-vehicle collisions, driving off the road, and head-on crashes. International drivers in New Zealand have been involved in a relatively large number of serious vehicle accidents. Therefore, [PERSON] and [PERSON] [2] provide some solutions to increase drivers' safety. These solutions include presenting prominent signage near airports and attractive tourist places and educating international drivers about traffic regulations using training videos and audio messages. More recently, to address this problem, Driver Safety Australia started road safety training programs using driving simulators in Queensland to put students and fleet drivers in realistic Australian on-road situations that offer a vast array of training possibilities and a range of driving conditions [3]. Similarly, another simulator, MyDriveschool inVictoria, offered to teach teenagers potentially lifesaving driving skills from home during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 while tests were cancelled and delayed for several months, leaving a backlog of prospective P-plates [4]. There are examples of driving simulators in other parts of the world. For example, in the Netherlands, the ANWB driving course, one of the largest driver training schools, has integrated simulator training in their entire basic driver-training program, using a pro-jected environment and a mock-up of a real car [5]. In earlier studies conducted by [6], it has been suggested that driver simulators can be very useful for the training of higher order skills that are performed at the knowledge-based level and require all steps in perceptual and cognitive processes (such as perception, diagnoses, prognosis, decision, and action). However, later studies cast some doubts on the usefulness of driver simulators such as [7] and [8] in terms of the acquisition of higher order skills. According to [7], although splitting up tasks into part tasks and mass repetition of part tasks helps to speed up the learning process, it does not help knowledge retention. [PERSON] and [PERSON] [8] argue that situational awareness is the product of a wholistic experience rather than education, and it is not useful to split up the tasks and train them separately. In this paper, our goal is to evaluate the impact of gamification elements used in driving simulators on road safety when driving under unfamiliar traffic regulations (i.e., keep-left traffic regulations for drivers who only have experience in driving in a keep-right traffic regulations). Gamification is adding game elements and game mechanics into nongame environments to engage users to interact with the other elements in the simulation while achieving a goal. These include points, leaderboards, badges, levels, and challenges. Gamification is often used to motivate people to reach particular achievements, such as completing a certain task, performing a certain action, or solving a certain problem, and can indirectly change behavior toward a specific issue (e.g., eco driving) [9]. While research on gamification and serious games has increased in the last few years, there are few studies that address gamification and drivers' safety. Thus, this article examines the use of gamification in driving, particularly when driving under unfamiliar traffic regulations, through an empirical study. The study evaluates driving safety in a simulator supported by gamification elements.