I'm Anne McCartt. I'm senior vice president
for research. Our department looks at a
wide range of highway safety topics.
We look at roadway safety, so we've studied
for example, how effective roundabouts
are in reducing crashes. We look at
behavior, mostly drivers, how can we
modify their behavior to make them safer,
and we look at pedestrians. And then
finally we look at vehicle safety
features. We've studied side airbags, front
airbags, electronic stability control and
looked at how much safer they can keep
people by looking at real world crashes.
It's hard to think about an important
highway safety issue we haven't studied.
We did some of the early research on
alcohol, showing how tough laws can make
a difference. We did some of the first
studies on seatbelts, and the Institute
was involved in the first "Click It or
Ticket" experiment in North Carolina.
One of the things that makes it
interesting to work in our department is
we have a wide range of backgrounds and
it allows us to look at multiple
dimensions of problems.
Wen Hu >> My name is Wen Hu
and I am a research transportation
engineer. Transportation engineers work
to improve traffic movement and safety
and my role at the Institute is to study
the effectiveness of these solutions.
Ian Reagan >> My name is Ian Reagan and I'm a senior
research scientist. The type of research
that I do is human factors psychology.
Man >> Go ahead and back up.
Ian Reagan >> In the world
of Highway Safety that usually means how
drivers interact with vehicles.
Eric Teoh >> I'm Eric Teoh. I'm a senior statistician.
In general a statistician looks for
patterns in real-world data to answer
research questions, for example, the effect of
antilock braking systems on fatal
motorcycle crashes. We use a lot of
mathematics and probability theory to do that.
Anne McCartt >> A lot of our research involves
looking at our crash databases, but we
also have done in-house experimental studies
Man >> This button here we'd like you
to press every time you see a target.
Anne McCartt >> where we are monitoring drivers on real
roads. So we did a study recently looking
at vehicles with different headlight systems.
Researcher >> We instrumented a vehicle and
placed targets on a road. We wanted to
measure if the drivers could see the
target sooner in the vehicle with
adaptive headlights compared to the same
vehicle for fixed ones.
Anne McCartt >> For a department
that does so much research, we're pretty
small, and what that means is that we
often collaborate with researchers at
other organizations so that we can
expand our expertise. We worked with
researchers at MIT for example.
David Kidd >> We worked
with MIT's Age Lab to see how demanding
and how visually distracting placing
a call or entering a destination into a
navigation system was while driving.
Navigation System >> Your task
is to call Frank Scott at work.
David Kidd >> We're interested in looking at
whether or not using your voice...
Driver >> Call Frank Scott at work.
David Kidd >> Was less distracting
than using your hands.
Anne McCartt >> What I love about
doing research at the Institute is that
we use such a variety of methods. That
makes life very interesting. Our research
in child safety illustrates the variety
of ways we look at an issue.
Jessica Jermakian >> The Institute has been doing
research in child passenger safety for decades. For
example, we've documented the importance
of using child restraints, examined the
benefits of sitting in the back seat,
we've educated parents about frontal
airbags and improved belt fit in booster
seats, but there's still more work to do.
One way we've been trying to make it
easier for parents to install child
restraints is to improve the LATCH
system. LATCH stands for Lower Anchors
and Tethers for Children. We've done
research with parent volunteers. We
validated those findings in real-world
data at child safety seat checkpoints,
and now we're rating vehicle LATCH systems.
Anne McCartt >> We don't stop at
a study that says this will work to
reduce injuries or deaths.
News Anchor >> There's new
information for parents trying to keep
their children safe...
Anne McCartt >> We figure out ways
to communicate our findings so that they
make a difference in the real world.
The Institute did some of the seminal
research identifying the risk for
teenage drivers, but we didn't stop there.
We then were involved in identifying a
very important countermeasure, graduated
licensing laws, and then we evaluated
those laws, and today we know that our
research has been a big part of keeping
teenagers safer.
New Anchor >> The insurance industry today put out a
list of recommended used cars for teenagers.
News Anchor >> Teenagers are driving those
smaller cheaper cars, so now the
Institute has compiled a list ...
Anne McCartt >> Our goal
at the Institute is to prevent crashes
and save lives, and our research has
really helped make that happen.