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.

News

Vehicle with crash damage

Drug use in crashes higher during COVID-19 pandemic

Tuesday, March 8, 2022
The COVID-19 pandemic has changed a lot of things, including the prevalence of drugged driving. The University of Iowa was selected as one of the collection sites to examine the prevalence of drugged driving among seriously and fatally injured road users
Farm equipment with SaferTrek GPS/video data devices

SaferTrek: Sharing the Road

Tuesday, March 1, 2022
Using devices installed on farm equipment, researchers collected data and video on vehicle interactions with on-road farm equipment.
A Tesla Model S75D with custom data collection capabilities is one of five vehicles in the fleet

Does regenerative braking have safety benefits?

Monday, February 14, 2022
If you’ve driven an electric vehicle, you’ve likely used regenerative braking. But is there a safety benefit to this feature? “You basically get a head start on the braking so that the stopping distance is reduced,” explained Chris Schwarz, PhD.
Toyota studying innovative headlights that project onto pavement to alert pedestrians

Innovative headlights could help save pedestrians, bicyclists

Tuesday, February 1, 2022
A new type of headlight may help save pedestrians from getting struck by vehicles at night, studied at University of Iowa with researchers from Toyota CSRC.
PAVE panel

McGehee, Ahmad appear on PAVE panel, see recording

Thursday, January 27, 2022
We're partnering with PAVE Campaign for their virtual panel "All AVs Are Local: Iowa's Automated Rural Shuttle" on Wednesday, Feb. 2, at 1 p.m. CT! Join our own Dan McGehee and Omar Ahmad as they discuss our ADS for Rural America automated shuttle project, with a recording available after Feb. 2.
Man driving with marijuana in hand

‘Arbitrary’ cutoffs of THC levels make it difficult to measure impaired driving

Friday, January 14, 2022
Knowing if you’re too impaired to drive due to cannabis use is not nearly as straightforward as it is from alcohol use. Finding a way to measure this is a topic of some of our ongoing research.
Automated shuttle bus on rural Iowa road

ADS for Rural America

Learn more about our Automated Driving Systems (ADS) for Rural America project, which is now driving a partially-automated shuttle bus through Iowa City, Hills, Riverside, and Kalona, Iowa. 

ADS for Rural America
NADS-1 bay, 3D globe image

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