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

Touch screens in cars are distracting, so why do we keep putting them there?

Saturday, October 19, 2019
Daniel McGehee is a human factors engineer and director of the National Advanced Driving Simulator at the University of Iowa, where he studies distracted driving and specializes in figuring out how to design vehicle interfaces around human limitations, such as memory and vision.
Connected driving on rural roads

Iowa researchers prepare rural roads for the future

Friday, October 4, 2019
Most roads in the U.S. are in rural areas, and the University of Iowa’s National Advanced Driving Simulator is working to make them safer and prepare them for a future with driverless vehicles.

Advanced Brain Monitoring Hits the Road with Cannabis Impairment Detection

Wednesday, October 2, 2019
Advanced Brain Monitoring is set to develop a Cannabis Impairment Detection Application. Building on successful achievements of a multi-year collaboration with the University of Iowa’s National Advanced Driving Simulator (NADS) involving drug effects on driving and brain activity, the team will conduct controlled cannabis dose-response studies with an alcohol comparison to assess the sensitivity and specificity of the CIDA.

A Cool 60 Million for Automated Driving R&D

Wednesday, September 25, 2019
The U.S. Department of Transportation awarded nearly $60 million in grant funding to eight projects in seven states to test the safe integration of automated driving systems (ADS). The grants seek to gather safety data to inform rulemaking and foster collaboration amongst state and local government and private partners.

Federal grant to help NADS study automated vehicles on rural roads

Thursday, September 19, 2019
The University of Iowa’s National Advanced Driving Simulator (NADS) received a $7 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation to study the safe deployment of automated vehicles in rural areas.

University of Iowa awarded $7 million from US DOT to test driverless technologies

Wednesday, September 18, 2019
The University of Iowa will put to use a $7.03 million grant it received from the U.S. Department of Transportation to test how automated driving systems safely can be introduced on the state’s roads.
Automated shuttle bus on rural Iowa road

ADS for Rural America

Learn more about our Automated Driving Systems (ADS) for Rural America project, which drove 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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