Jay Wang, center, chairman of the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering; Deborah Rosen, executive director of URI’s Transportation Center; and David Ferreira, simulator manager, demonstrate the driving simulator.

The Providence Journal / Frieda Squires

EAST GREENWICH — Want to feel what it’s like to drive a fire truck? How about a semi-trailer truck? A really big snowplow?

How about trying all three –– without risking anyone’s life or even getting up to change seats?

The University of Rhode Island’s Transportation Center has bought a simulator that can mimic numerous vehicles while confronting its human “driver” with strikingly realistic situations — some routine, but some of them crises such as a car running a stop sign and charging in front of the fire truck you’re driving. You must step on the brakes as fast as in real traffic. The fire truck stops, eventually.

Meanwhile, you’re encouraged to move things along by the column of smoke rising from the fire you’re trying to get to up the road.

The simulator is centered on three large video display screens. Close in front of the screens is a driver’s seat and the normal controls and instruments — accelerator and brake pedals, speedometer, gearshift lever, even an ignition key. A computer-equipped operator sits behind the driver, changing vehicle type and behavior and inserting challenges such as imprudent pedestrians, bad visibility or an icy road.

URI and the state Department of Transportation demonstrated the simulator at the DOT’s maintenance facility here. The whole arrangement takes up somewhat more space than a grand piano and fits easily in one end of a truck trailer.

The simulation replicates the rapidly changing view through the windshield and side windows of the stationary “vehicle.” You have to stay within the “lanes” as roadside objects — trees, signs, intersections, whatever — draw near and fall behind.

Take a corner more sharply than your fire truck can make and the steering wheel jerks realistically as you hit the curb. There are convincing sound effects: turning the ignition key produces the rumble of a diesel engine starting up. Hit something, and you hear the crash as well as see the impact.

It would make a good video game, but there’s no slot for money. The URI center, however, put up a lot of money for this ride. Deborah E. Rosen, the center’s director, said the simulator and its software cost about $200,000.

It’s also for serious purposes –– helping state and local government equipment operators do their jobs more effectively and safely, and allowing URI researchers to study problems such as driver distraction. For instance, Rosen said, the university wants to look into how much more distracting the relatively new, brilliantly lit, movie-like LED billboards are than conventional ones.

The passing scene, the approaching traffic and the appearance of the road itself that the simulator presents are obviously not real, but the effect is realistic. Look out the side window of the fire truck and you see the rear-view mirror –– and in that, you see the view behind, including the side of the red fire truck you’re driving.

In the snowplow version, if the operator doesn’t cover the lane he’s plowing, he leaves a trail of unplowed road. The controller can reduce the visibility until the operator can’t see the vehicle ahead of him. Speed up, and it reappears out of the fog.

Tony Apice is a Department of Transportation plow driver. During a snowstorm, you are likely to find him on Route 95 between Exits 3 and 5.

In a recent test run on URI’s simulator, Apice sat down and plowed some snow, in echelon formation behind another simulated plow. The simulator reported that he missed a bit of the snow left by the plow he was following. Apice found the simulator “pretty neat. I think I could enjoy this. I could learn some things.”

By another measure, a complete novice driving a simulated fire truck made halting progress, had trouble with turns, drove up on the curb repeatedly, crashed into a car that ran a stop sign and, eventually, got pretty close to the fire.

blandis@projo.com