Can video games prepare kids for driving in real world?

My wife and I nod appreciatively from the stands as we watch our 11-year-old son deftly drive his team's remote-controlled robotic crane at this month's Great Lakes Midwest Illinois VEX Regional Championship at Rotolo Middle School in Batavia.

Driving in a robotics competition against 18-year-olds who actually have driver's licenses, our preteen son understands the subtle movements that allow him to avoid collisions, back into tight spaces and drive well enough to help his young team make it into the semifinals.

“How did you get so good at driving?” we ask him.

“Video games,” he says with a shrug and a slight smile to indicate that he now has evidence to justify his hours spent racing virtual vehicles everywhere from the tracks of “Burnout Revenge” to the streets of “Simpsons Hit & Run.”

As much as I complain about our kids wasting time playing video games, the kid has a point. He and his 15-year-old twin brothers are far, far better drivers than I was at their age.

When I took driver's training the summer after I turned 15, it was assumed that I, being a farm kid, knew how to drive. Any farm kid who did well on the written test and didn't crash the driver's ed car on our one trip to Chicago was awarded a waiver, allowing me to acquire my first driver's license without having to take an actual driving test on the road.

Four decades and a million miles of driving later, I've still never taken one of those road tests where an instructor sits in my car and makes sure I check my mirrors, use turn signals, keep both hands on the wheel or can parallel park with more ease than I can spell parallel park.

The assumption that I was ready to drive after a few years of motoring a tractor through corn and soybean fields was faulty. The first time I drove on a road was behind the wheel of an International 560 farm tractor (my only convertible) with a top speed of about 35 mph. It also had no power steering, so if I wanted to make a turn, I grabbed the knob on the steering wheel and made a couple of complete revolutions as if I were manning a pirate ship.

As a result, I had no appreciation (or fear) of the subtleties of speed and control, and tended to fishtail as my car hopped down the road while I overcompensated with my steering and braking.

Video game-playing kids, however, have logged hundreds of virtual miles behind the wheels of precision-demanding sports cars that teach them fine motor skills and the dangers of speed. While some carmakers and driving schools have offered virtual-driving games to help kids learn how to drive, I couldn't find a conclusive study saying that kids who have played racing games are better drivers than kids who haven't. Some even argue that the ability to crash a video game car at 140 mph into a flaming semi-truck and quickly resume driving gives kids an even greater false sense of immortality.

But my children, whom I let practice driving with me on deserted gravel roads whenever we visit the family farm where I grew up, not only handle the car better than I did when I got my first license, they seem to have a better recognition of spatial elements such as stopping distance and where the back end of the car is when they turn. Used to scanning the entire virtual landscape for endless dangers at every turn, they also seem more aware of blind spots and on guard for whatever pops up in front, behind or along the roadsides.

Our oldest two won't even start driver's training until they are almost 16. They don't seem that eager to get their licenses and start paying for gas and parking and such. And I'm not willing to ease up on my harping about time wasted on video games. But if kids can use video games to better prepare themselves for real driving, I have to conclude that other video games they play have value, too.

If we ever are invaded by hordes of brain-eating Nazi zombies, I'm confident my kids will know what to do.