Since its establishment in 2011, the Toyota Collaborative Safety Research Center has been working with an array of North American intuitions on making things better for drivers and pedestrians. And it has just completed its 100^th project

By Gary S. Vasilash

 Toyota has a suite of driver-assistance systems and alerts—based on hardware and software—that it calls “Toyota Safety Sense” (TSS). Elements of the system include a pre-collision system, lane departure alert with steering assist, dynamic radar cruise control, and more.

Other OEMs have their TSS-like systems.

But what other OEMs don’t have is the Toyota Collaborative Safety Research Center (CSRC), established in 2011 by Akio Toyoda and funded (through 2026) to the tune of $115 million.

CSRC has collaborated with a number of organizations, from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia to Virginia Tech, from The Ohio State University Biomechanics Research Center to the Texas A&M Transportation Institute.

CSRC has announced the competition of its 100^th research project, a study with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology AgeLab on the “Non-Driving Related Tasks” (NDRTs) performed by drivers while, ostensibly, driving.

Things like interacting with steering wheel controls, center stack interaction, using a phone (known in the research world as a “PED”: Personal Electronic Device), eating or drinking, interacting with passengers, fixing hair, singing to self. . . .

A whole lot of things that are not directly related to the task at hand (i.e., driving).

The researchers had some 450 hours of driving data—video and digital information—and in it they annotated more than 145 hours of NDRT behavior.

Dr. Bryan Reimer, research scientist at the MIT AgeLab and founder and co-director of the Advanced Vehicle Technology Consortium (of which Toyota is a founding member), explained that an objective is to determine the impact of SAE Level 2 driver assistance technologies on driver behavior when it comes to engaging in NDRTs.

Although every driver knows that they are not to do many of the things that are within the NRDT sphere, Reimer says there’s what he calls “the Cheeseburger Equation.”

You are hungry. You stop at a fast-food place and buy a cheeseburger. If you don’t eat inside the restaurant, you take the cheeseburger into your vehicle. And if you don’t remain parked, you drive your vehicle. And eat the cheeseburger.

That’s just going to happen, Reimer says.

Now the objective isn’t to create cheeseburger-facilitating vehicular automation.

Rather, it is to determine the methods to discourage drivers from performing NDRTs, thereby enhancing vehicular safety.

(Reimer says that positive suggestions can help reinforce correct behaviors in a way that telling people what not to do doesn’t do.)

In addition to announcing the completion of the 100^th, CSRC announced 10 new projects:

• “Analysis of Speed Assist Implementations and Context-Aware Improvements.” with Touchstone Evaluations
• “Driver behavior adaptation to L2 automation,” with MIT AgeLab
• “Evaluating driving performance and behavior across varying vehicle specifications and driving contexts,” with Virginia Tech Transportation Institute
• “Safety benefits of in-vehicle alerts and notifications,” with Oregon State University
• “User Acceptance Factors for In-Vehicle Safety Systems Targeting Impared Driving,” with Impact Research
• “Comparing applicability of global ADAS testing scenarios in the U.S. context,” with University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute
• “Skeletal data for anthropometry and posture,” with University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute
• “Biological sex in ankle bone material properties,” with The Ohio State University Injury Biomechanics Research Center and University of Waterloo
• “Interacting While Driving: Evaluating Attentional Demands of In-Vehicle Interfaces,” with Auburn University

Much of the information developed has been and is shared with other interested parties throughout the vehicle environment and some have contributed to the development of standards.

At a time when budgets are being not merely cut but chopped, it is laudable that Toyota continues to do safety research.

It doesn’t simply result in better vehicles, but there have been more than 400 students, postdocs, and researchers from collaborating institutions that have worked on CSRC programs, and that experience is proliferated throughout industry for the betterment of all involved parties.