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

A bearded man stands next to the vehicle cab inside in NADS-2 simulator.

A Plethora of Driver Monitoring System (DMS) Data

Monday, April 15, 2024

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.

A man drives a car in a driving simulator.

Two simulators, One simulation

Monday, March 25, 2024

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.

Birds eye view of an Unreal Engine scenario of a school

New and upcoming features for miniSim users

Monday, February 26, 2024

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

An aerial view of two women sitting in the front of a Volvo XC90 while using adaptive cruise control/

The ADAS experts

Monday, February 12, 2024

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

Dawn Marshall and Tim Brown demonstrate the simulator setup for the alcohol detection study.

Driver monitoring systems (DMS) for cannabis and alcohol detection

Wednesday, January 31, 2024

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.