  According to data from the United Nations, more than 3000 people have died
each day in the world due to road traffic collision. Considering recent
researches, the human error may be considered as the main responsible for these
fatalities. Because of this, researchers seek alternatives to transfer the
vehicle control from people to autonomous systems. However, providing this
technological innovation for the people may demand complex challenges in the
legal, economic and technological areas. Consequently, carmakers and
researchers have divided the driving automation in safety and emergency systems
that improve the driver perception on the road. This may reduce the human
error. Therefore, the main contribution of this study is to propose a driving
simulator platform to develop and evaluate safety and emergency systems, in the
first design stage. This driving simulator platform has an advantage: a
flexible software structure.This allows in the simulation one adaptation for
development or evaluation of a system. The proposed driving simulator platform
was tested in two applications: cooperative vehicle system development and the
influence evaluation of a Driving Assistance System (\textit{DAS}) on a driver.
In the cooperative vehicle system development, the results obtained show that
the increment of the time delay in the communication among vehicles ($V2V$) is
determinant for the system performance. On the other hand, in the influence
evaluation of a \textit{DAS} in a driver, it was possible to conclude that the
\textit{DAS'} model does not have the level of influence necessary in a driver
to avoid an accident.
