Driving Safety Research Institute

Our Mission

We aim to make roads safer by researching the connection between humans and vehicles. We are home to the National Advanced Driving Simulator, and we now have a new name for our broader institute: the Driving Safety Research Institute.

About Us

Participate

Participate in one of our studies, or join our registry to get notified about new studies.

Rose Schmitt and John Gaspar in NADS-1 control room

Our Research

We partner with researchers around the world to study the connection between humans and vehicles.

The 24-foot NADS-1 simulator is on a six-legged base that rotates up to 330° and moves across the 64-foot square bay floor to simulate driving motions such as accelerating, lane changing, and skidding. There are 23 brakes on the large crossbeam that spans the room, while 42 hydrostatic bearings ride on a thin film of oil across smooth metal belts.

Our Tech

Simulators and Vehicles miniSim

News

Working to safely bring automated driving to rural roads

Thursday, October 17, 2024

Researchers at the Driving Safety Research Institute at the University of Iowa have completed more than three years of testing to learn the challenges automated vehicles encounter when operating on rural roads.

Elizabeth O'Neal explains children crossing behavior with self-driving cars

Children as pedestrians: Pedestrian safety and self-driving cars

Monday, September 16, 2024

The National Science Foundation features our partners at the Hank Virtual Environments Lab and our facility at DSRI in a new video on children crossing roads with self-driving cars.

University of Iowa testing drunken driver sensing technology

Monday, July 15, 2024

The Cedar Rapids Gazette

The Gazette reports: The UI Driving Safety Research Institute — home to the National Advanced Driving Simulator — recently landed $2 million from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to assess how effective new driver monitoring systems might be at determining if someone is driving drunk.

Joy Kim, PhD, commencement ceremony photo with her advisor Dan McGehee, PhD

Congrats to grad student Joy Kim on her PhD

Friday, June 28, 2024

Inside the NADS-1 simulator with graduate student Emily Shull and staff member Noah Rothermel

Driving Safety Research Institute analyzing new tech to identify alcohol impairment

Wednesday, June 12, 2024

The University of Iowa Driving Safety Research Institute was recently awarded $2 million from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to analyze the effectiveness of driver monitoring systems on their ability to detect if someone is driving while drunk—specifically, if they are over the legal limit or not.