Toyota Adds UC San Diego to Safety Research Partners

Toyota is expanding its automotive safety research partnerships with leading research institutions. Its Toyota Collaborative Safety Research Center (CSRC) is expanding its partner-based automotive safety initiative with the launch of seven new research programmes undertaken in partnership with 11 leading research institutions from across North America, including the University of California, San Diego.

The CSRC works with leading North American universities, hospitals, research institutions and agencies on projects aimed at developing and bringing to market new safety technologies to reduce traffic fatalities and injuries on North America's roads. 

Based at the Toyota Technical Center (TTC) in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the CSRC follows an open research approach based on sharing Toyota talent, technology, and data with a broad range of institutions and regulators so that safety advances can benefit all of society.

The announcement, made at Toyota's 2012 Safety Research Forum in Washington, DC yesterday, the new projects build on the CSRC's ongoing efforts to reduce the risk of driver distraction and better protect vulnerable traffic populations, including children, teens, seniors and pedestrians. The seven new initiatives represent a broad expansion of Toyota's research into the interaction between drivers, vehicles and the traffic environment, as well as a new, more comprehensive effort to understand teen driver behavior.

''We are excited to welcome our new research partners, whose important work will ultimately benefit other automakers and safety professionals,'' said Chuck Gulash, senior executive engineer at the Toyota Technical Center and Director of the CSRC. ''Through our unique 'open source' research model and our commitment to sharing Toyota talent, technology and data with a broad range of institutions and agencies, we hope to drive new innovations and understanding that will benefit not just Toyota drivers but everyone on the road.''

UC San Diego electrical and computer engineering professor Mohan Trivedi welcomed the announcement that Toyota's CSRC would fund a project on ''Automated Tools for Naturalistic Driving Study Data Analysis for Driving Assessment.''