Vehicle Driving Simulator is an important tool for the study of traffic characteristics among "people‐vehi‐cles‐roads‐environment"and is widely applied in traffic research with good reproducibility ,safety and low cost ,especially various vehicle data in dangerous scenarios can be collected .Research of vehicle driving simulator in traffic safety has made significant progress .This paper briefly reviewed the history of the development and application of vehicle driving simulator in the world and summarized the use of vehicle driving simulators in traffic safety in 5 areas :driving distraction , road design ,traffic design ,traffic accident ,and driving fatigue .The strengths and weaknesses were also analyzed .Final‐ly ,the future application of vehicle driving simulator in traffic safety in China and some existing issues were discussed .