It is expected that in the coming decade, cars with an automated driving mode will become available. Most likely, this automated mode will only be used in specific situations and/or on specific roads, which means that the driver/automation needs to switch between the automated mode and manual control. Such switches are termed ‘transitions of control’ (ToCs). How much time humans need to assess a traffic situation (i.e., to gain situation awareness, SA) while preparing for ToCs is still largely unknown. This study has been designed to assess whether the method used by Gugerty (1997), where particpants were asked to reproduce a traffic scenario in a top-down view, is suited for finding this preparation time by assessing its capabilities for finding effects of preparation time, and traffic density on reproduction performance. Participants were asked to reproduce the positions (i.e., distance & lane) and relative speeds of surrounding traffic in a top-down view after viewing each of 24 videos of simulated traffic scenarios on a three-lane highway, shown on a computer monitor. These scenarios had six different durations (1, 3, 7, 9, 12, and 20 seconds), which were participants’ preparation times, as well as two different levels of traffic density (4 vs. 6 surrounding cars). The scenarios were shown to participants in a randomized order. Results of the experiment showed that video length had a positive, and traffic density a negative effect on reproduction performance. The effects of video length on reproduction performance, when comparing scores of videos of 20 s to those of 1 s for combined traffic density, was strongest in the Average absolute error distance of hits and misses. Participants agreed more with having enough time to prepare for the task, and rated the reproduction task as ‘less difficult’ with longer videos, and with lower traffic density. The effect of traffic density on reproduction performance, averaged over all video lengths, was strongest in the hit percentage score. Although both video length and traffic density had clear effects on both self-reported ratings, the effect of video length was stronger in the self-reported time rating, and the effect of traffic density was stronger in the difficulty rating. The effect of increasing video length seemed to diminish for the reproduction of positions and number of surrounding cars. The diminishing of the effect could indicate that there is a saturation level of SA. With a lower traffic density the diminishing effect was stronger, which could indicate that a saturation level of SA is reached earlier when less traffic needs to be assessed. The diminishing effect was absent in the reproduction scores for speeds, which indicates that accurately reproducing the (relative) speeds of these amounts of surrounding traffic might take more time than the maximum of 20 s of this experiment. Although the used desktop-based method may lack the realism needed for direct application of the results, it seems suited for studying the preparation time if implemented in more immersive experimental designs.