Introduce a ranking system where rank increases with successive perfect runs. Connect the top 1-2% of hardcore truck sim players to real rigs?

That's what the America's Army games are for. Those are a project of the U.S. Army's recruiting command.

America's Army the original one ended up being a terrible game for playability, because it turns out making rifle shooting even semi-realistic is hella boring lol.

Lot of slowly crawling around the map on your belly, calling positions to snipers and grenadiers, and just waiting.

I haven't looked at it in decade++ though, so maybe it's an actual game now.

That's the point. They want to filter out the recruits that don't have the skills and patience for good infantry tactics.

I don't think AA was ever legitimately meant to find people in that way and was just a more traditional advertisement/propaganda tool meant to feed anyone into the recruiting pipeline.

Ok I looked up the more recent version of the game, apparently it has in fact capitulated to populism and no longer emphasizes realistic tactics. Supposedly many servers will kick you for camping now.

Ah good point

Also I vaguely recall they made you go through an AQT, and like sit in a classroom and learn medic triaging, etc.

I thought perhaps you could substitute AI driving when the human does something egregious, but realistically it should work the other way around. AI can handle the rudimentary stuff, it's the extracurricular road situations you will want the human in charge for.

I don't think that will work. Either you need to have the players legally liable for any damage and injury they cause, or you have created a platform for motivated psychopaths and terrorists to kill people with impunity.

The thought experiment (based on that ender reference) assumes nobody knows their actions are being mirrored in reality.

I know, I just don't think that's feasible. The outcome would be some people figuring it out, and having legal cover to commit murder since they were just playing a game. Cue long legal battle over culpability.

I would be curious if these simulations can be made accurate enough to filter out candidates for driving. Set up a series of scenarios and grade how each driver performs. Then long term compare that to actually perform if hired.

Building off another comment, enough drivers could be used to help train an AI how to drive or how to reach specific situations.

Perhaps many players given virtual control of the same truck could provide some sort of consensus that filters out the undesirable behaviour?

I am looking forward to Twitch drives heavy equipment

“The Gang drives heavy equipment”

Sure, until 4chan gets involved.

"pass on the left" + "stay behind a car" would turn to "slowly plow into the left half of a car"

You'd probably need some kind of median filtering or voting as well as averaging.