Driving Safety Research Institute

Safety Research Using Simulation (SAFER-SIM) is a grant-funded Tier 1 University Transportation Center that shares its research with both students and researchers. Led by the University of Iowa and directed by Dawn Marshall, research manager at DSRI, SAFER-SIM comprises a multi-disciplinary team of researchers across an additional four sites: University of Massachusetts–Amherst, University of Central Florida, University of Wisconsin–Madison, and University of Puerto Rico–Mayagüez.

Researchers at DSRI have combined data sets from six past studies that all looked at the use of various driver monitoring systems (DMS) to detect drowsiness, distraction, and other types of impairment.

In a multi-year project to connect the NADS-1 and NADS-2 simulators into the same virtual environment, the DSRI team upgraded the hardware and vehicle cab of the NADS-2 simulator. A new full cab is in the NADS-2 space, with a motion base for the cab that uses the miniSim architecture.

Our miniSim program is now supporting a few major upgrades plus more upgrades that will be available soon to miniSim users.

Our investigators have been working on a series of studies analyzing advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) technology and consumer understanding of ADAS features.

2023 was a year of driver monitoring systems (DMS) analyses for both cannabis and alcohol detection. DMS projects were collaborations between the University of Colorado, Swinburn University, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), and Seeing Machines.