The purpose of this research was to examine the effects of gender, field dependence and background complexity on driving behaviors. Two between-subjects factors of gender and field dependence and one within-subjects factor of background complexity were used to evaluate driving detection performance of 48 subjects (24 males and 24 females) through the use of virtual-environment technologies. Dependent measures included detection performance (reaction time, missing responses and over reactions), visual fatigue and subjective feelings of the participants toward the virtual driving environments. The results not only showed similar main effects of gender, field dependence and background complexity on detection performance as past studies indicated, but also demonstrated strong evidence in those interactions of multiple experimental factors on driving detection performance in different ways.