Games and virtual reality simulators are becoming increasingly popular tools for training both mental and physical. VR simulations and games are already in use by the army, various police forces, and even in certain medical areans as well. If a new pilot program called "InSight" pans out for Allstate, though, the next place you could be seeing video games is at the local DMV.

Allstate is currently piloting a new program which seeks to find out if playing driving video games could make better drivers out of those over 50. If the study shows that it can, the insurance company plans to offer discounts to mature drivers who pass the online tests and the current, single-state pilot would be spread across other states next year. The initial run at the program is taking place in Pennsylvania. Select customers in the state aged 50 to 75 will be brought in to test out the special games as part of a free option in the customers' current insurance plan. The total number of hours played by this experimental group will be tracked and then accident rates will be compared to a control group that had no contact with the games.

"As Allstate seeks ways to reinvent protection for the consumer, we are taking intelligent risks that are focused on finding new ways to bring value to our customers," a company spokesperson said in a statement. "This innovative approach to improving driver awareness and reaction time has the potential to significantly reduce accidents. That would make the roads safer—and potentially save lives."

Posit Science, a software developer from San Francisco, is behind the games in question. Surprisingly, the games aren't actually driving simulators, but rather various types of other brain-challenging games specifically designed to test and improve certain mental capacities. Unlike most brain-fitness software, InSight is designed to "reverse age-related cognitive decline and greatly improve a driver's visual alertness," according to a company press release. InSight claims that its software can reduce dangerous driving maneuvers by up to 40 percent and significantly increase reaction rates for stopping distance and lower general crash risk as well.



Jewel Diver is one of five games Allstate is using to test driver's sight and reaction times.

Allstate made one of the games available for press and the public to try out. Jewel Diver: Divided Attention, one of the five adaptive games in the InSight suite, tests the player's ability to track multiple moving objects at once. The theory is that the ability will essentially correlate to the user's ability to track many vehicles on the road.

Jewel Diver is a very simplistic web-based game. The game begins by showing the location of a number of red gems. The red gems are then hidden within the bodies of fish. The screen is then populated with other, similar-looking fish before the lot of them are shuffled around. The player must then correctly click on the fish containing the red gems. It's very similar to the classic "three shells and a pea" game.

Both managing editor Eric Bangeman and myself gave the game a go. I, a 24-year-old male with 20/20 vision, a perfect driving record, and nearly 20 years of gaming experience, topped out at tracking 3.56 jewels at a time, while Eric, a 40-year-old male with crappy vision and a driving record unblemished for the last 13 years, managed to track 4.22 jewels at a time. Contrast this with the data indicated following the test, which states that the average 20-year-old can successfully track almost 25 percent more than the average 50-year-old—and almost twice as much as an 80-year-old.

Allstate says that the increase in older drivers across the nation is a driving force behind the new initiative, citing a study that shows an 18 percent increase in the number of drivers aged 65 or older from 1996 to 2006. The company points out that this number "will only continue to rise as those from the baby boomer generation become seniors."

Games have proven to be successful tools in various other training capacities, specifically when it comes to hand-eye coordination and mental awareness, so seeing an insurance company attempt to leverage them for older drivers isn't entirely surprisingly. That said, the InSight project is another important advance in games' increasingly prominent role in today's society. And hey, if the pilot doesn't work out, at least we know that the A.I. for the games will wind up taking over the driving for the driver anyway.