As the graphics quality of modern-day video games continues to improve, experts are becoming increasingly worried about the effects that video games have on people doing everyday tasks. More specifically, a task that you do everyday: driving. So it's not surprising to find that German researchers are claiming that racing games are likely to impact your driving habits in a negative fashion.
Now, why am I not surprised? Well, it's fairly obvious that doing something in simulation that you wouldn't do in real life is not going to have many benefits on the tasks that you must do everyday.
In my opinion, people that can't handle what video games put in their brains have no business playing them in the first place. Let's face it: there are some people in this world who have some mental problems, take video games far too seriously, cannot see the difference between the simulation and reality, etc. So why publish a study on it? Obviously the people who are going to have such problems aren't going to be reading these things anyway, and there's not much we can do except limit their time playing their precious video games.
It's a point that's been argued over in the past many times. I think the most important thing is that if you happen to be parent of a particular child who has trouble differentiating between what she/he is supposed to do and what she/he is not supposed to do, then they should limit the times that the child plays games such as Need for Speed.
I mean, does a normal person want to go kill people after playing Half-Life or whatever violent FPS is out there? I'd say probably not. Likewise, with racing games, it's unlikely that a few million pixels colored in rapid succession can influence a regular person's driving habits.
Additionally, the researchers used simulators to conduct their research of people's driving habits after playing a racing video game. Well, now if that isn't insane I don't know what is... You're trying to get people to tell the difference between reality and simulation, yet you give them simulation and simulation. Perhaps regular driving wasn't exactly the most practical tool for researching, however I think it's absolutely essential in this particular study.
So do I think that people should play video games non-stop? No. Neither do researchers, which is probably part of the reason why they conducted this research. But I don't think I'm going to sell my racing games, or my first person shooters. I don't have mental problems, and since you're reading this, I doubt you do either.