Tag Archives: automotive safety

Toyota’s Significant Collaborative Safety Research

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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 100th 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 100th 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.

Dr. Bryan Reimer of the MIT AgeLab says he has worked with dozens of OEMs on projects and is impressed with Toyota’s commitment to safety research. (Image: gsv)

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 100th, 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.

Speed Kills. So Why Advertise It?

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By Gary S. Vasilash

“The simple fact is, no matter how skilled the driver, speed affects both the likelihood of a crash and the severity of crash injuries. High speeds leave a driver less time to react, less room to brake and less chance of surviving the force of a potential crash. Why are we promoting car sales by glorifying speed?”—Chuck Farmer, vp, Research & Statistical Services, IIHS

Likelihood and severity: 300,000 auto-related injuries in the U.S.; 12,000 deaths related to speed.

Farmer wrote a piece on the IIHS website calling into question OEM advertising that is predicated on “glorifying speed.”

He notes: “One might suppose that the viewer is aware enough to separate fantasy from reality, and we all know that speeding is dangerous.”

Do we?

“We’re all above-average drivers.”

And live in Lake Woebegon.

“We would never try to imitate the extreme stunt driving seen in the ads.”

We might not, but what about the kid down the street?

“But might we be tempted to push the boundaries of speed just a bit?”

Might the sun rise tomorrow?

Listen to the rhetoric surrounding electric vehicles. You’ll undoubtedly hear about its performance—as in torque and speed, not as in savings of electricity over gas or in the improved emissions performance.

“Buy and EV because it is really quick.”

Farmer:

“Today’s vehicles are more reliable, more efficient, more comfortable and safer than ever before. Shouldn’t that be enough of a selling point?”

Apparently not.

Toyota Advancing Safety Research

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Something that ought to be top of mind, tends not to be. But it still is for Toyota

By Gary S. Vasilash

One of the areas in automotive development that doesn’t get the attention it deserves—probably as it is not particularly sexy—is safety.

But find yourself in the process of an accident and you hope that the OEM that built the vehicle you’re traveling in is on the leading edge of safety research.

Toyota, which established the Collaborative Safety Research Center 10 years ago with the objective of performing open research with universities and hospitals (the former have lots of smart people and the latter have lots of smart people who are on the receiving end of things gone wrong) is sticking with it, as it has announced a five-year, $30-million commitment to the CSRC.

The CSRC has three research tracks that it is pursuing:

  • Human-centric, or helping people understand what advanced mobility can do. Also, customer health and wellness are part of it.
  • Safety assurance, or looking into the intersection of human drivers and automated driving systems.  Let’s face it: there is going to be a mixed of the manual and the automated for some time to come.
  • Assessment, or helping individuals and industry participants understand appropriate decision making predicated on quantitative mobility safety measures.

Explained Dr. Danil Prokhorov, director of Toyota’s Future Research Department and CSRC:

“Humans are at the center of Toyota’s technology development strategy, so we are designing our new safety research in pursuit of ‘Safety for All.’ As part of this, our projects will explore the diversity of safety needs and analyze safe mobility options that accommodate different applications, physical characteristics and levels of accessibility for people and society.”

Safety may not be sexy. But neither is a visit to an ER.